journalctl — Query the systemd journal
journalctl
[OPTIONS...] [MATCHES...]
journalctl may be used to query the contents of the systemd(1) journal as written by systemd-journald.service(8).
If called without parameters, it will show the full contents of the journal, starting with the oldest entry collected.
If one or more match arguments are passed, the
output is filtered accordingly. A match is in the
format "FIELD=VALUE
",
e.g. "_SYSTEMD_UNIT=httpd.service
",
referring to the components of a structured journal
entry. See
systemd.journal-fields(7)
for a list of well-known fields. If multiple matches
are specified matching different fields, the log
entries are filtered by both, i.e. the resulting output
will show only entries matching all the specified
matches of this kind. If two matches apply to the same
field, then they are automatically matched as
alternatives, i.e. the resulting output will show
entries matching any of the specified matches for the
same field. Finally, the character
"+
" may appears as a separate word
between other terms on the command line. This causes
all matches before and after to be combined in a
disjunction (i.e. logical OR).
As shortcuts for a few types of field/value
matches, file paths may be specified. If a file path
refers to an executable file, this is equivalent to an
"_EXE=
" match for the canonicalized
binary path. Similarly, if a path refers to a device
node, this is equivalent to a
"_KERNEL_DEVICE=
" match for the
device.
Additional constraints may be added using options
--boot
, --unit=
,
etc, to further limit what entries will be shown
(logical AND).
Output is interleaved from all accessible journal files, whether they are rotated or currently being written, and regardless of whether they belong to the system itself or are accessible user journals.
The set of journal files which will be used
can be modified using the --user
,
--system
, --directory
,
and --file
options, see below.
All users are granted access to their private
per-user journals. However, by default, only root and
users who are members of the "systemd-journal
"
group get access to the system journal and the
journals of other users.
The output is paged through
less by default, and long lines are
"truncated" to screen width. The hidden part can be
viewed by using the left-arrow and right-arrow
keys. Paging can be disabled; see the
--no-pager
option and the "Environment"
section below.
When outputting to a tty, lines are colored according to priority: lines of level ERROR and higher are colored red; lines of level NOTICE and higher are highlighted; other lines are displayed normally.
The following options are understood:
--no-full
, --full
, -l
¶Ellipsize fields when they do not fit in available columns. The default is to show full fields, allowing them to wrap or be truncated by the pager, if one is used.
The old options
-l
/--full
are not useful anymore, except to undo
--no-full
.
-a
, --all
¶Show all fields in full, even if they include unprintable characters or are very long.
-f
, --follow
¶Show only the most recent journal entries, and continuously print new entries as they are appended to the journal.
-e
, --pager-end
¶Immediately jump to
the end of the journal inside the
implied pager tool. This implies
-n1000
to guarantee
that the pager will not buffer logs of
unbounded size. This may be overridden
with an explicit -n
with some other numeric value while
-nall
will disable this cap.
Note that this option is only supported for the
less(1)
pager.
-n
, --lines=
¶Show the most recent
journal events and limit the number of
events shown. If
--follow
is used,
this option is implied. The argument is
a positive integer or "all
"
to disable line limiting. The default value is
10 if no argument is given.
--no-tail
¶Show all stored output
lines, even in follow mode. Undoes the
effect of
--lines=
.
-r
, --reverse
¶Reverse output so that the newest entries are displayed first.
-o
, --output=
¶Controls the formatting of the journal entries that are shown. Takes one of the following options:
short
¶is the default and generates an output that is mostly identical to the formatting of classic syslog files, showing one line per journal entry.
short-iso
¶is very similar, but shows ISO 8601 wallclock timestamps.
short-precise
¶is very similar, but shows timestamps with full microsecond precision.
short-monotonic
¶is very similar, but shows monotonic timestamps instead of wallclock timestamps.
verbose
¶shows the full-structured entry items with all fields.
export
¶serializes the journal into a binary (but mostly text-based) stream suitable for backups and network transfer (see Journal Export Format for more information).
json
¶formats entries as JSON data structures, one per line (see Journal JSON Format for more information).
json-pretty
¶formats entries as JSON data structures, but formats them in multiple lines in order to make them more readable by humans.
json-sse
¶formats entries as JSON data structures, but wraps them in a format suitable for Server-Sent Events.
cat
¶generates a very terse output, only showing the actual message of each journal entry with no metadata, not even a timestamp.
--utc
¶Express time in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
-x
, --catalog
¶Augment log lines with explanation texts from the message catalog. This will add explanatory help texts to log messages in the output where this is available. These short help texts will explain the context of an error or log event, possible solutions, as well as pointers to support forums, developer documentation, and any other relevant manuals. Note that help texts are not available for all messages, but only for selected ones. For more information on the message catalog, please refer to the Message Catalog Developer Documentation.
Note: when attaching
journalctl output
to bug reports, please do
not use
-x
.
-q
, --quiet
¶Suppresses any warning messages regarding inaccessible system journals when run as a normal user.
-m
, --merge
¶Show entries interleaved from all available journals, including remote ones.
-b [ID
][±offset
]
, --boot=[ID
][±offset
]
¶Show messages from a specific
boot. This will add a match for
"_BOOT_ID=
".
The argument may be empty, in which case logs for the current boot will be shown.
If the boot ID is omitted, a positive
offset
will look up
the boots starting from the beginning of the
journal, and a equal-or-less-than zero
offset
will look up
boots starting from the end of the
journal. Thus, 1
means the
first boot found in the journal in
chronological order, 2
the
second and so on; while -0
is the last boot, -1
the
boot before last, and so on. An empty
offset
is equivalent
to specifying -0
, except
when the current boot is not the last boot
(e.g. because --directory
was
specified to look at logs from a different
machine).
If the 32-character
ID
is specified, it
may optionally be followed by
offset
which
identifies the boot relative to the one given by
boot ID
. Negative
values mean earlier boots and a positive values
mean later boots. If
offset
is not
specified, a value of zero is assumed, and the
logs for the boot given by
ID
are shown.
--list-boots
¶Show a tabular list of boot numbers (relative to the current boot), their IDs, and the timestamps of the first and last message pertaining to the boot.
-k
, --dmesg
¶Show only kernel messages. This
implies -b
and adds the match
"_TRANSPORT=kernel
".
-t
, --identifier=SYSLOG_IDENTIFIER
|PATTERN
¶Show messages for the
specified syslog identifier
SYSLOG_IDENTIFIER
, or
for any of the messages with a "SYSLOG_IDENTIFIER
"
matched by PATTERN
.
This parameter can be specified multiple times.
-u
, --unit=UNIT
|PATTERN
¶Show messages for the
specified systemd unit
UNIT
(such
as a service unit), or for any of the
units matched by
PATTERN
.
If a pattern is specified, a list of
unit names found in the journal is
compared with the specified pattern
and all that match are used. For each
unit name, a match is added for
messages from the unit
("_SYSTEMD_UNIT=
"),
along with additional matches for
messages from systemd and messages
about coredumps for the specified
unit.UNIT
This parameter can be specified multiple times.
--user-unit=
¶Show messages for the
specified user session unit. This will
add a match for messages from the unit
("_SYSTEMD_USER_UNIT=
"
and "_UID=
") and
additional matches for messages from
session systemd and messages about
coredumps for the specified unit.
This parameter can be specified multiple times.
-p
, --priority=
¶Filter output by
message priorities or priority
ranges. Takes either a single numeric
or textual log level (i.e. between
0/"emerg
" and
7/"debug
"), or a
range of numeric/text log levels in
the form FROM..TO. The log levels are
the usual syslog log levels as
documented in
syslog(3),
i.e. "emerg
" (0),
"alert
" (1),
"crit
" (2),
"err
" (3),
"warning
" (4),
"notice
" (5),
"info
" (6),
"debug
" (7). If a
single log level is specified, all
messages with this log level or a
lower (hence more important) log level
are shown. If a range is specified, all
messages within the range are shown,
including both the start and the end
value of the range. This will add
"PRIORITY=
" matches
for the specified
priorities.
-c
, --cursor=
¶Start showing entries from the location in the journal specified by the passed cursor.
--after-cursor=
¶Start showing entries
from the location in the journal
after the
location specified by the this cursor.
The cursor is shown when the
--show-cursor
option
is used.
--show-cursor
¶The cursor is shown after the last entry after two dashes:
-- cursor: s=0639...
The format of the cursor is private and subject to change.
--since=
, --until=
¶Start showing entries
on or newer than the specified date,
or on or older than the specified
date, respectively. Date specifications
should be of the format
"2012-10-30 18:17:16
".
If the time part is omitted,
"00:00:00
" is assumed.
If only the seconds component is omitted,
":00
" is assumed. If the
date component is omitted, the current
day is assumed. Alternatively the strings
"yesterday
",
"today
",
"tomorrow
" are
understood, which refer to 00:00:00 of
the day before the current day, the
current day, or the day after the
current day, respectively. "now
"
refers to the current time. Finally,
relative times may be specified,
prefixed with "-
" or
"+
", referring to
times before or after the current
time, respectively.
-F
, --field=
¶Print all possible data values the specified field can take in all entries of the journal.
--system
, --user
¶Show messages from
system services and the kernel (with
--system
). Show
messages from service of current user
(with --user
).
If neither is specified, show all
messages that the user can see.
-M
, --machine=
¶Show messages from a running, local container. Specify a container name to connect to.
-D DIR
, --directory=DIR
¶Takes a directory path
as argument. If specified, journalctl
will operate on the specified journal
directory
DIR
instead
of the default runtime and system
journal paths.
--file=GLOB
¶Takes a file glob as an
argument. If specified, journalctl will
operate on the specified journal files
matching GLOB
instead of the default runtime and
system journal paths. May be specified
multiple times, in which case files will
be suitably interleaved.
--root=ROOT
¶Takes a directory path
as an argument. If specified, journalctl
will operate on catalog file hierarchy
underneath the specified directory
instead of the root directory
(e.g. --update-catalog
will create
).
ROOT
/var/lib/systemd/catalog/database
--new-id128
¶Instead of showing journal contents, generate a new 128-bit ID suitable for identifying messages. This is intended for usage by developers who need a new identifier for a new message they introduce and want to make recognizable. This will print the new ID in three different formats which can be copied into source code or similar.
--header
¶Instead of showing journal contents, show internal header information of the journal fields accessed.
--disk-usage
¶Shows the current disk usage of all journal files. This shows the sum of the disk usage of all archived and active journal files.
--vacuum-size=
, --vacuum-time=
¶Removes archived
journal files until the disk space
they use falls below the specified
size (specified with the usual K, M,
G, T suffixes), or all journal files
contain no data older than the
specified timespan (specified with the
usual s, min, h, days, months, weeks,
years suffixes). Note that running
--vacuum-size=
has
only indirect effect on the output
shown by --disk-usage
as the latter includes active journal
files, while the former only operates
on archived journal
files. --vacuum-size=
and --vacuum-time=
may be combined in a single invocation
to enforce both a size and time limit
on the archived journal
files.
--list-catalog
[128-bit-ID...
]
¶List the contents of the message catalog as a table of message IDs, plus their short description strings.
If any
128-bit-ID
s are
specified, only those entries are shown.
--dump-catalog
[128-bit-ID...
]
¶Show the contents of
the message catalog, with entries
separated by a line consisting of two
dashes and the ID (the format is the
same as .catalog
files).
If any
128-bit-ID
s are
specified, only those entries are shown.
--update-catalog
¶Update the message catalog index. This command needs to be executed each time new catalog files are installed, removed, or updated to rebuild the binary catalog index.
--setup-keys
¶Instead of showing
journal contents, generate a new key
pair for Forward Secure Sealing
(FSS). This will generate a sealing
key and a verification key. The
sealing key is stored in the journal
data directory and shall remain on the
host. The verification key should be
stored externally. Refer to the
Seal=
option in
journald.conf(5)
for information on Forward Secure
Sealing and for a link to a refereed
scholarly paper detailing the
cryptographic theory it is based on.
--force
¶When
--setup-keys
is passed and
Forward Secure Sealing (FSS) has already been
configured, recreate FSS keys.
--interval=
¶Specifies the change
interval for the sealing key when
generating an FSS key pair with
--setup-keys
. Shorter
intervals increase CPU consumption but
shorten the time range of
undetectable journal
alterations. Defaults to
15min.
--verify
¶Check the journal file
for internal consistency. If the
file has been generated with FSS
enabled and the FSS verification key
has been specified with
--verify-key=
,
authenticity of the journal file is
verified.
--verify-key=
¶Specifies the FSS
verification key to use for the
--verify
operation.
--flush
¶Asks the Journal
daemon to flush any log data stored in
/run/log/journal
into
/var/log/journal
,
if persistent storage is enabled. This
call does not return until the
operation is
complete.
-h
, --help
¶--version
¶--no-pager
¶Do not pipe output into a pager.
Without arguments, all collected logs are shown unfiltered:
journalctl
With one match specified, all entries with a field matching the expression are shown:
journalctl _SYSTEMD_UNIT=avahi-daemon.service
If two different fields are matched, only entries matching both expressions at the same time are shown:
journalctl _SYSTEMD_UNIT=avahi-daemon.service _PID=28097
If two matches refer to the same field, all entries matching either expression are shown:
journalctl _SYSTEMD_UNIT=avahi-daemon.service _SYSTEMD_UNIT=dbus.service
If the separator "+
" is used,
two expressions may be combined in a logical OR. The
following will show all messages from the Avahi
service process with the PID 28097 plus all messages
from the D-Bus service (from any of its
processes):
journalctl _SYSTEMD_UNIT=avahi-daemon.service _PID=28097 + _SYSTEMD_UNIT=dbus.service
Show all logs generated by the D-Bus executable:
journalctl /usr/bin/dbus-daemon
Show all logs of the kernel device node /dev/sda
:
journalctl /dev/sda
Show all kernel logs from previous boot:
journalctl -k -b -1
Show a live log display from a system service apache.service
:
journalctl -f -u apache