• +: the service is running

  • -: the service is not running

  • ?: the service state cannot be determined (for some reason).

The output of service --status-all lists the state of services controlled by System V.

The + indicates the service is running, - indicates a stopped service. You can see this by running service SERVICENAME status for a + and - service.

Some services are managed by Upstart. You can check the status of all Upstart services with sudo initctl list. Any service managed by Upstart will also show in the list provided by service --status-all but will be marked with a ?.

[ + ] acpid

[ - ] alsa-utils

[ - ] anacron

[ + ] apparmor

[ + ] apport

[ + ] avahi-daemon

[ + ] bluetooth

[ - ] console-setup.sh

[ + ] cron

[ + ] cups

[ + ] cups-browsed

[ + ] dbus

[ - ] gdm3

[ - ] gdomap

[ + ] grub-common

[ + ] haveged

[ + ] hddtemp

[ - ] hwclock.sh

[ + ] irqbalance

[ + ] kerneloops

[ - ] keyboard-setup.sh

[ + ] kmod

[ + ] lm-sensors

[ + ] network-manager

[ + ] openvpn

[ - ] plymouth

[ - ] plymouth-log

[ - ] pppd-dns

[ + ] preload

[ + ] procps

[ - ] pulseaudio-enable-autospawn

[ - ] rsync

[ + ] rsyslog

[ - ] saned

[ + ] sddm

[ - ] speech-dispatcher

[ - ] spice-vdagent

[ + ] udev

[ + ] ufw

[ + ] unattended-upgrades

[ - ] uuidd

[ + ] whoopsie

[ - ] x11-common