CLI Machines Power Services Ls

`ed machines services ls`

Lists the systemd service units on a machine. It is the default subcommand of services, so ed machines services tuf runs it. Also spelled ed machines services list.

ed machines services ls <machine> [--failed] [--json]

Arguments

Name	Type / values	Default	What it does
`<machine>`	machine name, ssh alias or id	required	Which machine to list units on.

Options

Name	Type / values	Default	What it does
`--failed`	flag	off	Only failed units, meaning those whose `active` or `sub` field is `failed`. Filtered on this Mac after the full list arrives.
`--json`	flag	off	Emit JSON on stdout instead of the table.
`--help`, `-h`	flag	off	Print the help for this command on stdout and exit 0.

$ ed machines services tuf
UNIT                       ACTIVE  SUB      WHAT
cron.service               active  running  Regular background program processing daemon
docker.service             active  running  Docker Application Container Engine
nginx.service              active  running  A high performance web server
ollama.service             failed  failed   Ollama Service
ssh.service                active  running  OpenBSD Secure Shell server
systemd-timesyncd.service  active  running  Network Time Synchronization

`--json` shape

A top-level array, one object per unit, in the order systemctl returned them:

[
  {
    "active": "active",
    "description": "A high performance web server",
    "failed": false,
    "load": "loaded",
    "running": true,
    "sub": "running",
    "unit": "nginx.service"
  },
  {
    "active": "failed",
    "description": "Ollama Service",
    "failed": true,
    "load": "loaded",
    "running": false,
    "sub": "failed",
    "unit": "ollama.service"
  }
]

load, active and sub are systemd's own three columns, passed through untouched. running is sub == "running" and failed is active == "failed" || sub == "failed", both precomputed so a script does not have to know systemd's vocabulary. The JSON key is description; the table column is headed WHAT.

Examples

ed machines services tuf
ed machines services ls tuf --failed
ed machines tuf services ls
ed machines services ls tuf --json | jq -r '.[] | select(.failed) | .unit'

Behaviour notes

The remote line is this, with a 30 second timeout:

systemctl list-units --type=service --all --no-pager --no-legend --plain 2>/dev/null | head -200

Three consequences worth knowing.

The list is capped at 200 units and there is no flag to raise it. A machine with more services than that loses the tail silently.

Only .service units are listed. Timers, sockets, mounts and targets are not, because the parser drops any line whose first field does not end in .service.

A machine with no systemd at all reports nothing rather than failing. The 2>/dev/null swallows the "command not found" and head exits 0, so you get a note on stderr and exit 0:

$ ed machines services ls box
no systemd units reported

--failed narrows the list here, on this Mac, after all 200 lines have crossed the wire. It is not systemctl --failed, so it costs the same as the full list.