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pkaramol
Asked: 2014-10-08 08:01:14 +0800 CST

How to check if ufw is running programmatically

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In most services (e.g. privoxy) there is a clean way to get the service status: ps -C [servicename] Then by checking the exit code ($?): 0: the service was running 1: not running This is not the case in ufw (not recognized as a service?) The sudo service ufw status always exits with 0 whether ufw was running or not. Any suggestions to get ufw programmatically through the exit code of the command used to check ufw status?

command-line

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    As the exit code returned by sudo ufw status is always 0 you just need to grep for the status value:

    $ sudo ufw status
Status: inactive
$ sudo ufw status | grep -qw active
$ echo $?
1

    To work correctly you have to use the -w option, from man grep:

       -w, --word-regexp
          Select  only  those  lines  containing  matches  that form whole
          words.  The test is that the matching substring must  either  be
          at  the  beginning  of  the  line,  or  preceded  by  a non-word
          constituent character.  Similarly, it must be either at the  end
          of  the  line  or  followed by a non-word constituent character.
          Word-constituent  characters  are  letters,  digits,   and   the
          underscore.

    -q is just the quiet mode, nothing is written to standard ouput

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  2. To check the status of UFW use 

    sudo ufw status verbose

    The output is similar to

    my@machine:~$ sudo ufw status verbose
[sudo] password for youruser:
Status: active
Logging: on (low)
Default: deny (incoming), allow (outgoing)
New profiles: skip
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