How do interpret the output of 'service --status-all'

Question

The man page of the service command lists the --status-all option so that you can check the status of all running services.

However when I run the command the first column can contain -, ? or + e.g.

[ - ]  postfix
[ + ]  postgresql-8.4
[ ? ]  pppd-dns

Is there some place where I can find out the significance of the first column ? I'm running ubuntu 10.10

Answer 1

• [?] means the service status isn't known (the init file does not output a status)
• [+] means the service is running
• [-] means the service is not running

There is probably an authoritative source, but I got it from looking at the /usr/sbin/service script.