A Journal Comes To systemd

[phoronix]

Phoronix: A Journal Comes To systemd

Lennart Poettering has announced a journal feature for systemd...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTAxNzg

[elanthis]

I like it. The logging systems on Linux/UNIX have long been a pain in my ass for many of the reasons that the document points out. Haven't looked at the implementation or specifics, but the general idea and stated goals seem to be exactly what we need.

[DaemonFC]

I like it already just from having syslogd finally behaving similarly to the other things systemd has straightened out and brought into the 21st century. This will probably be in Fedora 17 I guess.

[d4ddi0]

Interesting, but no thanks

No on-disk text files == FAIL

Sorry, no matter how cool the indexing and integration pieces are, if admins need a windows event-manager style tool to access it, no one is going to use it.

I like some of the ideas, but like Poeterings network-manager, it looks like the implementation will be a train wreck. Maybe it will inspire someone else to write something sane (like wicd to his network-manager)
Yay wicd.

[reflexing]

No on-disk text files == FAIL

Sorry, no matter how cool the indexing and integration pieces are, if admins need a windows event-manager style tool to access it, no one is going to use it.

You can run the journal side-by-side with a traditional syslog implementation.

I like some of the ideas, but like Poeterings network-manager, it looks like the implementation will be a train wreck. Maybe it will inspire someone else to write something sane (like wicd to his network-manager)
Yay wicd.

Why do you think Lennart have anything to do with network-manager? Anyway, IMHO Lennart's pulseaudio and systemd are one of the best services developed for Linux in recent years, very well-engineered.

It looks like you just don't like Lennart personally.

[peppepz]

Get off my lawn

They'll have to pry the syslog from my cold hands. My personal experience with these next-generation subsystems is not positive at all. I do hear that many people are happy with them, but I'm not. I'll resist installing them as long as they don't become de-facto mandatory because they get included as a dependency in some software I can't do without.

[curaga]

Why yes, one binary to rule them all. Next it will include X, sshd, libreoffice, and doom3.

[crazycheese]

Why do you think Lennart have anything to do with network-manager? Anyway, IMHO Lennart's pulseaudio and systemd are one of the best services developed for Linux in recent years, very well-engineered.

And then remember how many many times he was trash-talked regarding pulseaudio? With critics either using OSS themself, or using text-configured single ALSA card, with non-audio-blocking applications cherry-picked :X
Constantly and continuously. Same here; you just wait.

[DaemonFC]

And then remember how many many times he was trash-talked regarding pulseaudio? With critics either using OSS themself, or using text-configured single ALSA card, with non-audio-blocking applications cherry-picked :X
Constantly and continuously. Same here; you just wait.

FWIW, OSS and ALSA's horrible to nonexistant software mixing was cited as a reason Jamie Zawinski went to OS X on his desktop. (In 2005, before Pulseaudio)

With OSS (More or less a BSD thing these days) or ALSA and no Pulseaudio, you go back to the 1990s where being able to access the soundcard becomes a race condition if the thing doesn't have a hardware mixer, which is only typically available on high end dedicated cards (the cheap Sound Blasters they sell at Walmart don't cut it, they're nto even an upgrade from what comes on your motherboard.). In some cases, integrated is all you have, due to lack of ports or being on some kind of portable or embedded system, or not wanting to throw $200 at a sound card, and mixing just has to work. Enter Pulseaudio. I don't know why it is so maligned, it took a situation that was unbearable and made it into one that mostly works, with a few minor glitches in some corner cases. Go use OSS if it suits you, it's complete and utter dog crap, even the version 4 one, but go ahead. Or rip out Pulseaudio and see how long until you're tearing your hair out with ALSA's mixer. Lennart Poettering has expressed frustration that OSS (again, BSD thing) isn't even good enough to use with Pulseaudio properly. If you want to avoid Pulseaudio by using a BSD that never improves as a desktop system as some kind of "strategy" to avoid new and improved stuff on Linux, be my guest, your system.

Back to systemd journal, there's already a lot of FUD flying, but let me discredit the two that make no sense at all.

1. It doesn't have to replace syslogd. It can be installed side by side if you need the old primitive syslog too for some reason.

2. It DOES save the journal to the disk, it simply stores better information than syslog does, and only the relevant bits, so less stuff ends up hitting the disk and crapflooding your logs with useless junk. Also worth mentioning is that if the system is under attack, they can't easily forge the journal like they can with syslog (Used by all Linux distributions and all BSDs) now.

When the journal comes along it will just be another excellent tool that BSD is too primitive/crude to make use of.

[reflexing]

And then remember how many many times he was trash-talked regarding pulseaudio? With critics either using OSS themself, or using text-configured single ALSA card, with non-audio-blocking applications cherry-picked :X
Constantly and continuously. Same here; you just wait.

You listened to only one side? Didn't you know about broken ALSA drivers? Pulseaudio have been revealed many bugs in ALSA drivers, some of them are buggy as hell even now. The overall drivers quality become better. Win-win situation, even if you use power-hungry ALSA + DMix instead of good-engineered Pulse with much lower power consumption and per-application volume control and better resampling and other cool features Pulse has.