Syslog replacement Journal integrated into systemd

The recently released systemd v38 includes Journal, the syslog alternative originally announced last autumn. Developed to a large extent by Lennart Poettering and Kay Sievers, the extension for the sysvinit and Upstart alternative systemd is intended to, in the long run, solve some of the problems the developers see in the logging service syslog. For many years, syslog has been the de facto standard for system-wide protocolling on Unix systems. When Journal was announced, it received a lot of criticism, especially for the extent of its reach, as can be seen in this discussion on an article on LWN.net about the Journal announcement.

In the announcement of the new systemd version, Poettering points out that it is "more kind of a test release" suitable for development branches like Fedora Rawhide but not for updated distributions intended for end users. Fedora Rawhide, the current development head for Fedora 17, which is expected in May, already includes the most recent systemd. Syslog has not yet been replaced, however – indeed, November's announcement made no indication that that was the plan. Instead, Journal replaces some of systemd's internal protocol functions. In the standard configuration, the new systemd only puts the log data in the main memory; you can use the programme systemd-journalctl to view the information.

(djwm)