Upstart command line tools behave differently if used with sudo than as root

[Jure Sah]

Upstart command line tools such as "service", "start" and "stop" behave differently if used as root, or if used with sudo.

For example:
$ sudo service network-manager status
network-manager start/running, process 27764

However:

$ su
# service network-manager status
status: Unknown job: network-manager

Furthermore, bewilderingly:

$ sudo -i
# service network-manager status
network-manager start/running, process 27764

The command should not behave differently depending on the way in which the administrator enters root privileges.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

$ env|grep UPST
UPSTART_SESSION=unix:abstract=/com/ubuntu/upstart-session/1000/21059
UPSTART_INSTANCE=
UPSTART_EVENTS=xsession started
UPSTART_JOB=unity7
$

It behaves differently based on the process environment - as many programs do. If you want to query the status of system-level jobs, you can use 'status --system' to bypass the per-user session.

And if you want the behavior of 'su' to not be tainted by your user environment, run 'su -'.