Conky changed between Linux Mint v17.1 and v18. While the transition requires mostly copy/paste new code to the top part of your .conkyrc file and leaving the bottom part as is, certain things no longer work.
For example, reporting the status of certain important background tasks, SSH & Apache2, stopped working because UpStart is no longer a part of Linux Mint v18 so “status ssh” no longer works: “Systemd” is now the thing. Don’t get me started on their choice to muddle the ethernet port names ‘to make them more predictable’. “Eth0” worked really well for me in my one-port only systems.
Back to the topic. Typing “service ssh status” will work as a normal user (you need no longer be root to use it), but the output takes up several lines, which I don’t want: I want a simple “Yes it is running” or “No it is not running”.
$ service ssh status ● ssh.service - OpenBSD Secure Shell server Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/ssh.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled) Active: inactive (dead) Sep 10 20:57:00 pops systemd[1]: Starting OpenBSD Secure Shell server... Sep 10 20:57:00 pops sshd[28133]: Server listening on 999.999.999.999 port 98765. Sep 10 20:57:00 pops systemd[1]: Started OpenBSD Secure Shell server. Sep 10 20:58:13 pops systemd[1]: Stopping OpenBSD Secure Shell server... Sep 10 20:58:13 pops systemd[1]: Stopped OpenBSD Secure Shell server. $
Here is how I fixed it.
${color FFAA00}Process Status ${hr 2}$color
SSH: ${exec service ssh status | sed -n '/Active:/p' | cut -c 11-27}
Apache: ${exec service apache2 status | sed -n '/Active:/p' | cut -c 11-27}