Show Failed systemd Units

A VPS feels unhealthy, but checking services one by one wastes time and misses failed timers, mounts, and sockets.

Command

systemctl --failed --no-pager

Before you run this

System impact: Read-only. Low when scoped to the shown target.

When not to use it: Do not use it as the only health check; a service can be running but still misconfigured or returning bad responses.

Expected output

Failed unit rows such as backup.service or app-worker.service.

System impact

Read-only. Nothing changes. The command prints units whose current systemd state is failed.

Recovery / rollback: no state is changed.

When to use it

Use after deploys, reboots, package upgrades, or alerts when you need the fastest systemd health snapshot.

When not to use it

Do not use it as the only health check; a service can be running but still misconfigured or returning bad responses.

Watch this command run

Command transcript

This sanitized transcript shows the commands and output shape without exposing host details.

demo@lab:~$

$ systemctl --failed --no-pager

  UNIT              LOAD   ACTIVE SUB    DESCRIPTION
  backup.service    loaded failed failed Nightly backup job
  app-worker.service loaded failed failed App background worker
2 loaded units listed.

$ systemctl status nginx --no-pager --lines=30

● nginx.service - A high performance web server
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Thu 2026-06-25 14:12:10 CDT; 18min ago
   Main PID: 842 (nginx)
      Tasks: 3
     Memory: 12.4M
Jun 25 14:12:10 vps nginx[842]: start worker processes
Jun 25 14:12:11 vps nginx[842]: ready for connections

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