Re: More systemdCrap

On 3/11/25 11:28, John McCue wrote:

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
<snip>
 

It would be very easy to scan the file and copy to a new one deleting
specific instances to remove certain classes of logs, but the
programmers were too lazy and arrogant to be bothered to do it

 IIRC, from articles I read, this journal is a binary file
with some form of database type keys.  So I would think if
it has keys, a function would exist where one can delete a
group of entries similar to what you can do via SQL or in
the old Berkeley D/B.
 But based upon this thread, that cannot be done.  So I see
it as a "miss" on the systemd people.  I would think such a
function would be kind of easy to do.
 This looks like some kind of key to me :)
 https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd/Journal#Facility
 <snip>
 

It is not clear to me if this is a flaw or an advantage. Where the OS is used for important/critical processing, it is clearly an advantage to have a reliable audit trail. No updates or deletions, if you want to alter the way it looks you make additional entries, corrections. This pattern works fine for accounting systems.
I guess the only real downside for OS logging is additional log space required. It should be possible to achieve virtual deletions with persistent filtering entries. Maybe they intend to do this, or maybe they feel people should be happy with filtering as is, and it is an unnecessary complexity.
It is also worth mentioning that supporting one type of logging for mission-critical systems and another type for TNP's heating system, by default, may introduce additional complexity in itself.
I quite like systemd, not because it is good, but because it is standard, good enough.