CentOS 7 systemctl - no feedback or status/output

Question

I just installed CentOS 7.1 on one server and I'm confused by how systemctl works compared to service.

On CentOS 6, I would get feedback when running service, such as:

root@centos6 [~]# service mysql restart
Shutting down MySQL........................................[  OK  ]
Starting MySQL.............................................[  OK  ]

root@centos6 [~]# service mysql status
MySQL running (910285)                                     [  OK  ]
root@centos6 [~]#

However on CentOS 7, when I use systemctl, I get nothing. I don't know what happened, or if something even happened:

root@centos7 [~]# systemctl restart mysql
root@centos7 [~]# /bin/systemctl restart  mysql.service

# Nothing happened

And when I run service on CentOS 7, this happens:

root@centos7 [~]# service mysql restart
Redirecting to /bin/systemctl restart  mysql.service

What am I'm missing?

Answer 1

Here is what I do:

systemctl start my-service && journalctl -fexu my-service

journalctl is the simplest way to get output from your systemd services.

• -f follows the log output of my-service until I quit (ctrl-C).
• -e scrolls to the end (most recent) log messages.
• -x explanations from the Journal Message Catalog, if available.
  (See also https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/catalog/)
• -u will only show logs from the my-service unit.

Answer 2

Like any good unix command, systemctl outputs nothing unless there was a problem, or you ran a command that explicitly requires output. If you see nothing, then the command was successful.

If you wish, you can run systemctl status mysql to see its current status.

Answer 3

My "solution" to this (did a long time ago) was to write a miniscript that basically does what's suggested in one of the answers above: systemctl restart myservice and right after that systemctl status myservice, so you just run a restart and get the status afterwards. I also agree that this is an unnecessary solution as systemctl should already have a verbose/status option implemented but it is what it is.

Answer 4

Unfortunately systemctl does not provide a "verbose" option like most Unix commands do.

One solution is to increase SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL to debug (info is useless here) and then filter the output like e.g.:

$ SERVICES="smartmontools cron xxxxx"
$ SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL=debug systemctl restart $SERVICES 2>&1|egrep "Got result .* for job|Failed"
Failed to restart xxxxx.service: Unit xxxxx.service not found.
Got result done/Success for job cron.service
Got result done/Success for job smartmontools.service

You can also add a prefix like e.g.

$ SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL=debug systemctl restart $SERVICES 2>&1|egrep -i "Got result .* for job|Failed"|sed 's,^,restart: ,'
restart: Failed to restart xxxxx.service: Unit xxxxx.service not found.
restart: Got result done/Success for job cron.service
restart: Got result done/Success for job smartmontools.service

SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL might not be available on all systems.