Bug 984758

Summary:	journalctl -f still cuts long lines
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Matthew Miller <mattdm>
Component:	systemd	Assignee:	systemd-maint
Status:	CLOSED RAWHIDE	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	20	CC:	amcnabb, awilliam, johannbg, lars, lnykryn, msekleta, notting, plautrba, systemd-maint, vpavlin, zbyszek
Target Milestone:	---
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Hardware:	Unspecified
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Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
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Last Closed:	2014-01-15 14:59:34 UTC	Type:	Bug
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Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Embargoed:

Description Matthew Miller 2013-07-15 21:57:07 UTC

Description of problem:

Bugzilla #831665 fixes the case where journalctl truncates lines in pager mode, but it apparently still does so in journalctl -f mode. This makes it significantly different from and arguably quite a bit less useful than `tail -f /var/log/messages`.

On one system with a moderately-long (automatically assigned) hostname, I get only about 10 characters of actual message per line.

I really think --full is the user-friendly default here.

Comment 1 Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek 2013-07-15 23:37:05 UTC

Typing 'journalctl -fl' instead of 'journalctl -f' is not a big effort, and ellipsization is very much a matter of personal preference. But, indeed, I'd say that --full is more useful as default, and wouldn't mind seeing it changed for journalctl (but not for systemctl status).

Comment 2 Matthew Miller 2013-07-16 00:11:09 UTC

(In reply to Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek from comment #1)
> Typing 'journalctl -fl' instead of 'journalctl -f' is not a big effort, and
> ellipsization is very much a matter of personal preference. But, indeed, I'd
> say that --full is more useful as default, and wouldn't mind seeing it
> changed for journalctl (but not for systemctl status).

Is -l an alias for --full on newer journalctl? On F19, it doesn't work.

At the _very_ least, we should make sure that all documentation about "tail -f /var/log/messages" says "journalctl

Comment 3 Andrew McNabb 2013-07-16 17:51:09 UTC

The truncation is really annoying, and I agree that it would be much more useful if this were disabled by default.

Comment 4 Bill Nottingham 2013-07-16 18:59:55 UTC

(In reply to Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek from comment #1)
> Typing 'journalctl -fl' instead of 'journalctl -f' is not a big effort, and
> ellipsization is very much a matter of personal preference. But, indeed, I'd
> say that --full is more useful as default, and wouldn't mind seeing it
> changed for journalctl (but not for systemctl status).

Yeah, I'm fine with ellipsizing status, but for replacing tail -f ..., the -f should behave in roughly the same way  - no truncating.

Comment 5 Adam Williamson 2013-07-16 21:19:11 UTC

One more vote for not truncating by default. Default to the most useful behaviour. Truncating is very non-useful; almost all lines are wider than my terminal width. A lot of people still use 80x24 terminals out of habit, though there's no particularly good _reason_ to do so.

Comment 6 Fedora End Of Life 2013-09-16 14:31:12 UTC

This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 20 development cycle.
Changing version to '20'.

More information and reason for this action is here:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping/Fedora20

Comment 7 Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek 2013-10-08 03:52:59 UTC

Default flipped to --full in http://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/commit/?id=2b8f688.

Comment 8 Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek 2014-01-15 14:59:34 UTC

I'm including the change to --full by default for F21, but not earlier ones.