Re: [gentoo-user] Questions about systemd logging

[Robin Atwood]

On Thursday 10 January 2013, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 5:12 AM, Robin Atwood <robin.atwood@×××××××××.net>
wrote:
> > I have temporarily shelved my problem with mounting since my work-around
> > seems adequate. But I have some questions about logging. Journald works
> > fine but what am I supposed to see on the main console?
>
> What do you mean by "main console"? tty1? tty12? /dev/console?
>
> > All I can see is a few
> > kernel messages which cease after the lvm service completes. There are no
> > service starting messages and no login prompt appears. The other ttys
> > have a banner and prompt as usual.
>
> systemd by default only spawns 1 (one) tty, tty1:
>
> $ ls /etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/
> getty@××××.service
>
> That's the only login prompt spawned by default. The other virtual
> consoles get spawned automatically if you switch to them. In other
> words, if you never switch to the virtual console 2, there is no login
> prompt there. It will appear until you switch to it. systemd should
> switch to tty1 and launch getty@××××.service automatically when the
> getty.target is reached in the boot process.
>
> I'm not really sure what the problem is; if you are concerned by the
> "[ OK ]" messages when booting, it is possible that systemd is so fast
> that you have no chance to see them (that happens in my laptop with a
> solid state harddrive). Also, if you have a splash (like plymouth),
> the whole point of the splash is that you don't see said messages. You
> can see a copy of the "boot log" in /var/log/boot.log; that it's what
> you are supposed to see when booting, but if you have a splash you
> won't, or maybe it will be so fast that you will miss it.
>
> > Secondly I want to merge the journal into syslog-ng for post-processing.
> > I have the correct syslog-ng service defined and syslog-ng.conf has been
> > modified to use /run/systemd/journald/syslog as a source unix-stream.
> > But I see no systemd messages appearing. In the Gentoo package all the
> > journald.conf statements are commented out, which ones are necessary to
> > do what I want. I have tried the "logging_to_syslog/kmsg" options but to
> > no effect, but there are many!
>
> I switched from syslog-ng to rsyslog around three years ago, and
> exclusively to the journal some months ago, so this is from memory:
>
> 1. You need to link your syslog service unit to
> /etc/systemd/system/syslog.service; for example:
>
> /etc/systemd/system/syslog.service ->
> /usr/lib/systemd/system/syslog-ng.service
>
> 2. You need to set LogTarget=syslog (or LogTarget=syslog-or-kmsg) in
> /etc/systemd/system.conf. You are configuring *systemd* to use a third
> party syslog; you don't need to configure the journal itself.
>
> man 5 systemd.conf
> man 1 systemd
>
> If I recall correctly, that's it. systemd automatically will buffer
> the early boot messages until your preferred syslog service start, and
> from that point on it will send the logs to it immediately.

Thanks for the tips, now I can get more output to tty1 if I want. I still 
can't get any systemd messages to syslog-ng, however. A bit of a mystery. 

Cheers
-Robin
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Robin Atwood.

"Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
 Where there ain't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst"
         from "Mandalay" by Rudyard Kipling
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