How to check if a service that I don't know the name of is running on Ubuntu - linux

Question

I do not know the service's name, but would like to stop the service by checking its status.
For example, if I want to check if the PostgreSQL service is running or not, but I don't know the service's name, then how could I check its status?
I know the command to check the status if the service name is known.

Answer 1

I don't have an Ubuntu box, but on Red Hat Linux you can see all running services by running the following command:
service --status-all
On the list the + indicates the service is running, - indicates service is not running, ? indicates the service state cannot be determined.

Answer 2

For Ubuntu (checked with 12.04)
You can get list of all services and select by color one of them with 'grep':
sudo service --status-all | grep postgres
Or you may use another way if you know correct name of service:
sudo service postgresql status

Answer 3

Maybe what you want is the ps command;
ps -ef
will show you all processes running. Then if you have an idea of what you're looking for use grep to filter;
ps -ef | grep postgres

Answer 4

There is a simple way to verify if a service is running
systemctl status service_name
Try PostgreSQL:
systemctl status postgresql

Answer 5

If you run the following command you will get a list of services:
sudo service --status-all
To get a list of upstart jobs run this command:
sudo initctl list

Answer 6

You can use the below command to check the list of all services.
ps aux
To check your own service:
ps aux | grep postgres

Answer 7

the best way is using of nmap tool in terminal.
nmap is an useful tool that analyse an up system, using it's IP Address, then show all actived network services.
open terminal and use of this example :
~$ nmap 192.168.1.3/24
Starting Nmap 5.21 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2016-05-16 22:49 IRDT
Nmap scan report for 192.168.1.3
Host is up (0.00020s latency).
Not shown: 994 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
22/tcp open ssh
23/tcp open telnet
139/tcp open netbios-ssn
445/tcp open microsoft-ds
3389/tcp open ms-term-serv
3689/tcp open rendezvous

Answer 8

run
ps -ef | grep name-related-to-process
above command will give all the details like pid, start time about the process.
like if you want all java realted process give java
or if you have name of process place the name

Answer 9

To check the status of a service on linux operating system :
//in case of super user(admin) requires
sudo service {service_name} status
// in case of normal user
service {service_name} status
To stop or start service
// in case of admin requires
sudo service {service_name} start/stop
// in case of normal user
service {service_name} start/stop
To get the list of all services along with PID :
sudo service --status-all
You can use systemctl instead of directly calling service :
systemctl status/start/stop {service_name}

Answer 10

Dirty way to find running services. (sometime it is not accurate because some custom script doesn't have |status| option)
[root#server ~]# for qw in `ls /etc/init.d/*`; do $qw status | grep -i running; done
auditd (pid 1089) is running...
crond (pid 1296) is running...
fail2ban-server (pid 1309) is running...
httpd (pid 7895) is running...
messagebus (pid 1145) is running...
mysqld (pid 1994) is running...
master (pid 1272) is running...
radiusd (pid 1712) is running...
redis-server (pid 1133) is running...
rsyslogd (pid 1109) is running...
openssh-daemon (pid 7040) is running...

Answer 11

For centos, below command worked for me (:
locate postgres | grep service
Output:
/usr/lib/firewalld/services/postgresql.xml
/usr/lib/systemd/system/postgresql-9.3.service
sudo systemctl status postgresql-9.3.service

Answer 12

for Centos 6.10 :
/sbin/service serviceNAME status
for Centos 7.6 and ubuntu 18.04:
systemctl status NAME.service
works for all of them:
service --status-all

Answer 13

Based on this answer on a similar topic https://askubuntu.com/a/58406 I prefer: /etc/init.d/postgres status

Answer 14

if you are looking particularly for postgres there is a specific command called "pgrep"
you can find the usage in the below mentioned article
https://mydbanotebook.org/post/troubleshooting-01/
this article provides the following details:
check if postgres server is running
where does postgres store all the server config
how to start/stop postgres
hope this is helpful