Liane Praza's Weblog

Discovering services available on your system is really easy. A few interesting questions to ask:

1. What services are enabled/running? svcs(1) with no options answers that easily:

   $ svcs
   ...
   online         Feb_04   svc:/network/ntp:default
   online         Feb_04   svc:/network/service:default
   online         Feb_04   svc:/application/x11/xfs:default
   online         Feb_04   svc:/application/font/stfsloader:default
   ...
   

2. What services are available? Just ask svcs(1) to list all services, including the disabled ones:

   $ svcs -a
   disabled       Feb_04   svc:/system/metainit:default
   disabled       Feb_04   svc:/network/rpc/nisplus:default
   disabled       Feb_04   svc:/network/nis/server:default
   

3. What do these available services do anyways? Again, just ask svcs(1). This time, get the service description too:

   $ svcs -a -o FMRI,DESC
   svc:/milestone/name-services:default               name services milestone
   svc:/platform/i86pc/kdmconfig:default              Display configuration
   svc:/system/cron:default                           clock daemon (cron)
   

4. And how do I find out more about the service I'm interested in? svcs gives useful information with both the -x and -l options. The manpage references in svcs -x are particularly helpful. We'll be adding those to the -l output as well.

   $ svcs -x system-log
   svc:/system/system-log:default (system log)
    State: online since Fri Feb 04 19:30:11 2005
      See: syslogd(1M)
      See: /var/svc/log/system-system-log:default.log
   Impact: None.
   
   $ svcs -l system-log
   fmri         svc:/system/system-log:default
   name         system log
   enabled      true
   state        online
   next_state   none
   state_time   Fri Feb 04 19:30:11 2005
   logfile      /var/svc/log/system-system-log:default.log
   restarter    svc:/system/svc/restarter:default
   contract_id  51 
   dependency   require_all/none svc:/milestone/sysconfig (online)
   dependency   require_all/none svc:/system/filesystem/local (online)
   dependency   optional_all/none svc:/system/filesystem/autofs (online)
   dependency   require_all/none svc:/milestone/name-services (online)