Interpretting systemctl status output

Question

I'm trying to solve the lvmetad startup warning lvmetad startup warning, and in that process I typed the following command:

sudo systemctl status lvm2-lvmetad.service

The output is:

● lvm2-lvmetad.service - LVM2 metadata daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/lvm2-lvmetad.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since lun. 2016-10-24 09:02:16 CEST; 1h 20min ago
     Docs: man:lvmetad(8)
 Main PID: 615 (lvmetad)
    Tasks: 1 (limit: 4915)
   Memory: 2.6M
      CPU: 4ms
   CGroup: /system.slice/lvm2-lvmetad.service
           └─615 /sbin/lvmetad -f

I'm perplexed by the Loaded line: what does mean loaded but disabled (and still active on next line) ?

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 31 '17 at 15:59

Loaded notes whether the service file is loaded into memory. Other possible values besides loaded are masked or error in the case of invalid syntax.
disabled and enabled usually relate to whether the service is set to start on boot or not. From man systemctl:

Enabling simply hooks the unit into various suggested places (for example, so that the unit is automatically started on boot or when a particular kind of hardware is plugged in). Starting actually spawns the daemon process (in case of service units), or binds the socket (in case of socket units), and so on.

active usually tells you if the service is running or not. Note though that a service can be active but not running due to the RemainAfterExit= directive. "If set to true, the service shall be considered active even when all its processes exited". This directive is documented in man systemd.service.

Interpretting systemctl status output

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