Re: [gentoo-user] syslog-ng: how to read the log files

[lee]

Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> writes:

> On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 6:41 PM, lee <lee@××××××××.de> wrote:
>>
>> To me it is one of the good reasons, and an important one.  Plain text
>> can usually always be read without further ado, be it from rescue
>> systems you booted or with software available on different operating
>> systems.  It can be also be processed with scripts and sent as email.
>> You can probably even read it on your cell phone.  You can still read
>> log files that were created 20 years ago when they are plain text.
>
> Doing any of that stuff requires the use of software capable of
> reading text files.  It isn't like you can just interpret the magnetic
> fields on your disk with your eyes.

Yes, and it doesn't seem very likely that it'll become impossible to
read text files in the next 20 years.

> Sure, there are a lot more utilities that can read text files than
> journal files, but you just need to arrange to have them handy.
> They'll be ubiquitous before long since every distro around will end
> up needing them.

Hopefully not, systemd is a bad thing for many reasons.

>> Can you do all that with the binary files created by systemd?  I can't
>> even read them on a working system.
>>
>
> You just type journalctl to read the live system logs.  For offline
> use you just type journalctl --file=filename.  Or you can just run
> strings on the file I imagine if you're desperate.  If it doesn't work
> on a "working system" then your system isn't working.

See, ppl already claim that when something that comes from systemd isn't
working, then the system isn't working.  Unfortunately, they overlook
that when things systemd don't work by design, it's bad design or a
problem of systemd rather than the system not working.


-- 
Again we must be afraid of speaking of daemons for fear that daemons
might swallow us.  Finally, this fear has become reasonable.