How do you check the status of a service with systemctl?

systemctl status <unit> gives the full picture — active state, main PID, and recent log lines; is-active/is-enabled/is-failed give scriptable one-word answers.

systemctl status sshd.service is usually the first command you run when "something's wrong with a service" — and crucially it ends with the last few journal lines for that unit, so you often see the error without even opening journalctl.

systemctl status sshd.service

What it shows:

• the unit's description and the path of its unit file
• whether it's loaded, and active (running) / inactive (dead) / failed
• the main PID and current memory/CPU usage
• the most recent log entries from the journal

For scripts and quick checks, the is-* subcommands return a single word and a useful exit code (so you can branch on them in a shell script):

See everything that's broken at once:

systemctl --failed --type=service

Tip: because status already embeds recent journal output, it's frequently all you need to diagnose a crash — only drop to journalctl -u sshd when you need more history than the last few lines.