Watch systemd service status with systemctl

Question

Is there any option that allow watching the status of a systemd service in real time with systemctl

What I actually do:

systemctl status tor

For example:

systemctl watch tor

rusty shackleford · Accepted Answer · 2019-12-02 12:11:35Z

16

You could use the watch command to watch the output of systemctl status tor:

watch systemctl status tor

You can also follow the systemd logs for the service, which may also be useful:

journalctl -u tor -f

answered Dec 2, 2019 at 12:11

rusty shackleford

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2

Any way to still get colored output from watch? Using -c doesn't seem to help
– Panki
Dec 2, 2019 at 12:13
6

Sure, you can use the -c option of watch to interpret ANSI colour sequences, and the variable SYSTEMD_COLORS=1 to force systemctl to output in colour. So the command would be watch -c SYSTEMD_COLORS=1 systemctl status tor
– rusty shackleford
Dec 2, 2019 at 13:50
2

Thanks for the followup, makes for a nice alias: alias statuswatch='watch -c SYSTEMD_COLORS=1 systemctl status'
– Panki
Dec 2, 2019 at 15:20

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