How can I get the output of "service --status-all" from the terminal and enter it into a list of list? (each list contains a line)

I have tried this code:

```
a  = os.popen('service --status-all').readlines()
    print a
    string=str(a)
    str=string.split('\n')

```

but it does not allow me to seperate the lines for some reason.
how can I do this?

thank you