Hi there
On 12/12/2025 04:53, Paul M. Foster wrote:
On 12/11/25 3:20 PM, Nicolas George wrote:
Paul M. Foster (HE12025-12-11):
Systemd has a lot of parts, most of which most distributions don't
use. One
annoyance of systemd is that it effectively encrypts the system log.
You
have to use something like journalctl to get at the logs, rather than
just
feeding them to less or more.
Are you complaining that you need a command provided by a binary in your
path to read these logs instead of another command provided by another
binary in your path?
So, is it possible to get regular unencrypted system logs on systemd?
The answer depends on your exact definition of “on systemd”.
Regards,
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. Instead, the log file(s) are
more or less binary. I don't like that. Thus, I am looking for a way to
have clear text log files while still running systemd (since I really
can't avoid systemd on Debian).
You can run Debian on a non-GUI box without systemd. And probably on a
GUI box as well.
Some of my Debian systems use systemd. Some don't. All run rsyslogd.
AFAIK rsyslogd is default installed on a non-systemd box. So you have to
install it 'manually' on a systemd box.
Combining systemd, rsyslogd and xconsole on Debian requires a bit of
tinkering but does work as well;
http://www.sput.nl/software/debian.html#xcons
Regards,
Rob
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