if else statement incorrect output - bash

Question

I'm working on a custom Nagios script that will monitor cPanel to make sure it is running and give back a status depending on what it gets from an output of service cpanel status. This is what I have:
##############################################################################
# Constants
cpanelstate="running..."
ALERT_OK="OK - cPanel is running"
ALERT_CRITICAL="CRITICAL - cPanel is NOT running"
###############################################################################
cpanel=$(service cpanel status | head -1)
if [ "$cpanel" = "$cpanelstate" ]; then
echo $ALERT_OK
exit 0
else
echo $ALERT_CRITICAL
exit 2
fi
exit $exitstatus
When I run the script, this is the output I get:
root#shared01 [/home/mvelez]# /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_cpanel
CRITICAL - cPanel is NOT running
When I run the script, cPanel IS RUNNING but this is the output I get. As a matter of fact, no matter what the status reports for cPanel this is the output that comes out. When I comment out the ELSE, ECHO and EXIT 2 statement:
#else
# echo $ALERT_CRITICAL
# exit 2
It gives back a blank output:
root#shared01 [/home/mvelez]# /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_cpanel
root#shared01 [/home/mvelez]#
I'm not sure what I'm not doing correctly as I am very new to bash scripting and trying to learn as I go along. Thank you in advanced for any and all help very very much!

Answer 1

The code below should work, but you might need to run it with sudo, because 'service' might not be available for ordinary users.
#!/bin/bash
##############################################################################
# Constants
cpanelstate="running"
ALERT_OK="OK - cPanel is running"
ALERT_CRITICAL="CRITICAL - cPanel is NOT running"
###############################################################################
cpanel=$(service apache2 status | head -1)
echo CPANEL $cpanel
if [[ $cpanel == *$cpanelstate* ]]; then
echo $ALERT_OK
exit 0
else
echo $ALERT_CRITICAL
exit 2
fi

Answer 2

#Oleg Gryb's answer solves your problem, but as for why your original script didn't work:
[ "$cpanel" = "$cpanelstate" ] compared the full command output - e.g., cpsrvd (pid 10066) is running..., against a substring of the expected output, running... for equality, which will obviously fail.
The solution is to use bash's pattern matching, provided via the right-hand side of its [[ ... ]] conditional (bash's superior alternative to the [ ... ] conditional):
[[ "$cpanel" == *"$cpanelstate" ]]
* represents any sequence of characters, so that this conditional returns true, if $cpanel ends with $cpanelstate (note how * must be unquoted to be recognized as a special pattern char.)