Operates on the system systemd instance. This is the implied default.

Operates on the user systemd instance.

Operates on the system-wide configuration for user systemd instance.

When used in conjunction with the dot command (see above), selects which dependencies are shown in the dependency graph. If --order is passed, only dependencies of type After= or Before= are shown. If --require is passed, only dependencies of type Requires=, Requisite=, Wants= and Conflicts= are shown. If neither is passed, this shows dependencies of all these types.

When used in conjunction with the dot command (see above), this selects which relationships are shown in the dependency graph. Both options require a glob(7) pattern as an argument, which will be matched against the left-hand and the right-hand, respectively, nodes of a relationship.

Each of these can be used more than once, in which case the unit name must match one of the values. When tests for both sides of the relation are present, a relation must pass both tests to be shown. When patterns are also specified as positional arguments, they must match at least one side of the relation. In other words, patterns specified with those two options will trim the list of edges matched by the positional arguments, if any are given, and fully determine the list of edges shown otherwise.

When used in conjunction with the critical-chain command (see above), also show units, which finished timespan earlier, than the latest unit in the same level. The unit of timespan is seconds unless specified with a different unit, e.g. "50ms".

Do not invoke man(1) to verify the existence of man pages listed in Documentation=.

Invoke unit generators, see systemd.generator(7). Some generators require root privileges. Under a normal user, running with generators enabled will generally result in some warnings.

Control verification of units and their dependencies and whether systemd-analyze verify exits with a non-zero process exit status or not. With yes, return a non-zero process exit status when warnings arise during verification of either the specified unit or any of its associated dependencies. With no, return a non-zero process exit status when warnings arise during verification of only the specified unit. With one, return a non-zero process exit status when warnings arise during verification of either the specified unit or its immediate dependencies. If this option is not specified, zero is returned as the exit status regardless whether warnings arise during verification or not.

With cat-files and verify, operate on files underneath the specified root path PATH.

With cat-files and verify, operate on files inside the specified image path PATH.

With security, perform an offline security review of the specified unit files, i.e. does not have to rely on PID 1 to acquire security information for the files like the security verb when used by itself does. This means that --offline= can be used with --root= and --image= as well. If a unit's overall exposure level is above that set by --threshold= (default value is 100), --offline= will return an error.

With security --offline=, takes into consideration the specified portable profile when assessing unit settings. The profile can be passed by name, in which case the well-known system locations will be searched, or it can be the full path to a specific drop-in file.

With security, allow the user to set a custom value to compare the overall exposure level with, for the specified unit files. If a unit's overall exposure level, is greater than that set by the user, security will return an error. --threshold= can be used with --offline= as well and its default value is 100.

With security, allow the user to define a custom set of requirements formatted as a JSON file against which to compare the specified unit file(s) and determine their overall exposure level to security threats.

See example "JSON Policy" below.

With the security command, generate a JSON formatted output of the security analysis table. The format is a JSON array with objects containing the following fields: set which indicates if the setting has been enabled or not, name which is what is used to refer to the setting, json_field which is the JSON compatible identifier of the setting, description which is an outline of the setting state, and exposure which is a number in the range 0.0…10.0, where a higher value corresponds to a higher security threat. The JSON version of the table is printed to standard output. The MODE passed to the option can be one of three: off which is the default, pretty and short which respectively output a prettified or shorted JSON version of the security table.

When used with the calendar command, show the specified number of iterations the specified calendar expression will elapse next. Defaults to 1.

When used with the calendar command, show next iterations relative to the specified point in time. If not specified defaults to the current time.

When used with the condition command, evaluate all the Condition*=... and Assert*=... assignments in the specified unit file. The full unit search path is formed by combining the directories for the specified unit with the usual unit load paths. The variable $SYSTEMD_UNIT_PATH is supported, and may be used to replace or augment the compiled in set of unit load paths; see systemd.unit(5). All units files present in the directory containing the specified unit will be used in preference to the other paths.

Execute the operation remotely. Specify a hostname, or a username and hostname separated by "@", to connect to. The hostname may optionally be suffixed by a port ssh is listening on, separated by ":", and then a container name, separated by "/", which connects directly to a specific container on the specified host. This will use SSH to talk to the remote machine manager instance. Container names may be enumerated with machinectl -H HOST. Put IPv6 addresses in brackets.

Execute operation on a local container. Specify a container name to connect to, optionally prefixed by a user name to connect as and a separating "@" character. If the special string ".host" is used in place of the container name, a connection to the local system is made (which is useful to connect to a specific user's user bus: "--user --machine=lennart@.host"). If the "@" syntax is not used, the connection is made as root user. If the "@" syntax is used either the left hand side or the right hand side may be omitted (but not both) in which case the local user name and ".host" are implied.

Suppress hints and other non-essential output.

Print a short help text and exit.

Print a short version string and exit.

Do not pipe output into a pager.

The maximum log level of emitted messages (messages with a higher log level, i.e. less important ones, will be suppressed). Either one of (in order of decreasing importance) emerg, alert, crit, err, warning, notice, info, debug, or an integer in the range 0…7. See syslog(3) for more information.

A boolean. If true, messages written to the tty will be colored according to priority.

This setting is only useful when messages are written directly to the terminal, because journalctl(1) and other tools that display logs will color messages based on the log level on their own.

A boolean. If true, console log messages will be prefixed with a timestamp.

This setting is only useful when messages are written directly to the terminal or a file, because journalctl(1) and other tools that display logs will attach timestamps based on the entry metadata on their own.

A boolean. If true, messages will be prefixed with a filename and line number in the source code where the message originates.

Note that the log location is often attached as metadata to journal entries anyway. Including it directly in the message text can nevertheless be convenient when debugging programs.

A boolean. If true, messages will be prefixed with the current numerical thread ID (TID).

Note that the this information is attached as metadata to journal entries anyway. Including it directly in the message text can nevertheless be convenient when debugging programs.

The destination for log messages. One of console (log to the attached tty), console-prefixed (log to the attached tty but with prefixes encoding the log level and "facility", see syslog(3), kmsg (log to the kernel circular log buffer), journal (log to the journal), journal-or-kmsg (log to the journal if available, and to kmsg otherwise), auto (determine the appropriate log target automatically, the default), null (disable log output).

Pager to use when --no-pager is not given. $SYSTEMD_PAGER is used if set; otherwise $PAGER is used. If neither $SYSTEMD_PAGER nor $PAGER are set, a set of well-known pager implementations is tried in turn, including less(1) and more(1), until one is found. If no pager implementation is discovered, no pager is invoked. Setting those environment variables to an empty string or the value "cat" is equivalent to passing --no-pager.

Note: if $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE is not set, $SYSTEMD_PAGER and $PAGER can only be used to disable the pager (with "cat" or ""), and are otherwise ignored.

Override the options passed to less (by default "FRSXMK").

Users might want to change two options in particular:

Note that setting the regular $LESS environment variable has no effect for less invocations by systemd tools.

See less(1) for more discussion.

Override the charset passed to less (by default "utf-8", if the invoking terminal is determined to be UTF-8 compatible).

Note that setting the regular $LESSCHARSET environment variable has no effect for less invocations by systemd tools.

Common pager commands like less(1), in addition to "paging", i.e. scrolling through the output, support opening of or writing to other files and running arbitrary shell commands. When commands are invoked with elevated privileges, for example under sudo(8) or pkexec(1), the pager becomes a security boundary. Care must be taken that only programs with strictly limited functionality are used as pagers, and unintended interactive features like opening or creation of new files or starting of subprocesses are not allowed. "Secure mode" for the pager may be enabled as described below, if the pager supports that (most pagers are not written in a way that takes this into consideration). It is recommended to either explicitly enable "secure mode" or to completely disable the pager using --no-pager or PAGER=cat when allowing untrusted users to execute commands with elevated privileges.

This option takes a boolean argument. When set to true, the "secure mode" of the pager is enabled. In "secure mode", LESSSECURE=1 will be set when invoking the pager, which instructs the pager to disable commands that open or create new files or start new subprocesses. Currently only less(1) is known to understand this variable and implement "secure mode".

When set to false, no limitation is placed on the pager. Setting SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE=0 or not removing it from the inherited environment may allow the user to invoke arbitrary commands.

When $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE is not set, systemd tools attempt to automatically figure out if "secure mode" should be enabled and whether the pager supports it. "Secure mode" is enabled if the effective UID is not the same as the owner of the login session, see geteuid(2) and sd_pid_get_owner_uid(3), or when running under sudo(8) or similar tools ($SUDO_UID is set ^[1]). In those cases, SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE=1 will be set and pagers which are not known to implement "secure mode" will not be used at all. Note that this autodetection only covers the most common mechanisms to elevate privileges and is intended as convenience. It is recommended to explicitly set $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE or disable the pager.

Note that if the $SYSTEMD_PAGER or $PAGER variables are to be honoured, other than to disable the pager, $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE must be set too.

Takes a boolean argument. When true, systemd and related utilities will use colors in their output, otherwise the output will be monochrome. Additionally, the variable can take one of the following special values: "16", "256" to restrict the use of colors to the base 16 or 256 ANSI colors, respectively. This can be specified to override the automatic decision based on $TERM and what the console is connected to.

The value must be a boolean. Controls whether clickable links should be generated in the output for terminal emulators supporting this. This can be specified to override the decision that systemd makes based on $TERM and other conditions.