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Why does systemctl list-units show units as 'not-found'?

Why does systemctl list-units show units as 'not-found'?

Units may be shown as 'not-found' if they are listed as a target in another unit file, but are not available or unknown to systemd.

Systemd may show units, like services, as not-found in the LOAD column. Typically this is caused that these units are not available to systemd. There are a few causes for this to happen, such as being listed as a dependency for another unit. Typically units with the ’not-found’ state are not having an issue, especially if they are just a soft target for other units.

Example output

When filtering the output of the list-units subcommand on services, we can include the --all option to show them all.

# systemctl list-units --type=service --all
  UNIT                                    LOAD      ACTIVE   SUB     DESCRIPTION
  apparmor.service                        loaded    active   exited  Load AppArmor profiles
  apport-autoreport.service               loaded    inactive dead    Process error reports when automatic reporting is enabled
  apport.service                          loaded    active   exited  LSB: automatic crash report generation
  apt-daily-upgrade.service               loaded    inactive dead    Daily apt upgrade and clean activities
  apt-daily.service                       loaded    inactive dead    Daily apt download activities
● auditd.service                          not-found inactive dead    auditd.service
  auth-rpcgss-module.service              loaded    inactive dead    Kernel Module supporting RPCSEC_GSS

In this case it is the auditd.service that could not be found. The reason is simple, auditd is not installed on the system. So why does systemd, and systemctl in particular, list it in the first place? That is because it is a target defined in the sshd.service.

After=network.target auditd.service

Learn more about systemctl

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» Mastering the tool: systemctl

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