Re: Using old (not systemd) system logs

[Kris Deugau <kdeugau@vianet.ca>]

Nicolas George wrote:
> Paul M. Foster (HE12025-12-11):
> > On systems which don't use systemd, the log files are in clear text, and you
> > can simply use cat or more or less and/or grep to read through the files.
> > This isn't true for systemd systems.
>
> This is not true. I have systemd systems with logs in plain text. You
> are making unfounded assumptions.

# head /var/log/journal/[identifier]/system.journal
[binary gibberish snipped]

That's....  not plain text.

And neither are any of the other files in that directory:

# cd /var/log/journal/[identifier]
# file *
system@[identifier].journal~:   Journal file, online
system@[identifier].journal~:   Journal file, online
....
system@[identifier].journal:    Journal file, archived
system@[identifier].journal:    Journal file, archived
....
system@[identifier].journal:    Journal file, offline
system@[identifier].journal:    Journal file, offline
[etc]

Whereas:

# file /var/log/*log
/var/log/alternatives.log: empty
/var/log/auth.log:         ASCII text
/var/log/boot.log:         empty
/var/log/daemon.log:       ASCII text
/var/log/dpkg.log:         ASCII text
/var/log/fontconfig.log:   ASCII text
/var/log/kern.log:         ASCII text
/var/log/mail.log:         ASCII text, with very long lines (361)
/var/log/syslog:           ASCII text, with very long lines (346)
/var/log/user.log:         ASCII text, with very long lines (302)

... but none of these are produced *by journald*.

-kgd