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

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 6:41 PM, lee <lee@yagibdah.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.

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.

>
> 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.


-- 
Rich