information provided by System Services is incorrect

[N7DR]

Running Kubuntu gutsy amd64.

Go to System Settings | System Services. The status of many of the listed services is incorrect. Many of the services are listed as "not running" when in fact they are running. This bug has been confirmed by several users on the Kubuntu-users reflector. (See <email address hidden> and the following messages in that thread.)

This bug does not seem to be confined to 64-bit gutsy; that just happens to be the version I am running.

It is possible that this bug represents a security vulnerability: although I have seen only cases in which a service is listed as "not running" when in fact it is running, if the opposite also occurs then it is possible that a user might believe that a security-related service is running when in fact it is not running. Since I haven't seen an instance in which the status is mis-reported for a process that is actually NOT running, I will not list this as a security vulnerability. However, I encourage the security team to look at this bug to determine whether there are any cases in which the status of NOT-running services is misreported.

[Parthan SR (parth-technofreak)]

N7DR,

Thank you for taking time to file this bug and help us make Ubuntu better. Can you ask some of the other users you mentioned to confirm this bug?

[bmarsh (bmarsh-bmarsh)]

There seems to be confusion in the location where PID files are to be placed.

For example, in /var/run are many PID files and these show up in 'systems settings' as currently 'running'.

However, many PID files are contained in directories off of /var/run such as vsftpd/. On my 8.04 Hardy system,
vsftpd is running but Systems Services shows it is NOT running. Same for avahi-daemon which is also contained within a directory off /var/run.

So yes, the Systems Settings is broken but it may be due to the placement of the PID files.

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

Kubuntu 8.04 has reached the end of its supported life, and unfortunately the Guidance user configuration tool and the Guidance Power Manager were the only Guidance apps to survive. The rest were removed from distribution and will not be receiving any more bugfixes. Thanks for understanding, and have a nice day.