On Sat, Jul 3, 2021 at 11:45 AM Theodore Ts'o <tytso(a)mit.edu> wrote:
On Sat, Jul 03, 2021 at 09:20:57AM -0400, Dan Cross
wrote:
Systemd is both good and bad.
I agree with most of what you assess as "good" and "bad" with
systemd.
However...
It uses ersatz data formats that are abjectly
horrible. It uses binary logging, which means that one cannot use the
full
complement of Unix text filters to inspect
logs....
To be fair, systemd isn't the first. BSD's sar program uses a binary
log file.
You mean System V's sar program? BSD has never had a sar program.
It's not in any of the CSRG releases, nor in any of {Free,Net,Open}BSD
systems that are around today.
It first appeared in System Vr1, and was in each of the following releases
if the listings of files on the net are any indication.
I'm not sure whether it's BSD's fault
or only after it was pulled into
the systat package for Linux, but the binary format for the sar file
is (a) not self-describing, (b) not backwards compatible, and (c) not
stable between different versions, such that if you copy /var/log/sa/saNN
the files from one system and try to interpret it on another system, you
need to make sure that other system has the same version of sar installed.
Sounds awful...
Warner