Journald vs Syslog Debate

Comments discuss and compare systemd's journald with traditional tools like rsyslog and syslog-ng for logging, focusing on binary vs. text formats, centralization, performance, and ease of access.

📉 Falling 0.4x DevOps & Infrastructure
3,154
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#168
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
2
2008
15
2009
21
2010
36
2011
131
2012
91
2013
144
2014
285
2015
284
2016
217
2017
138
2018
134
2019
182
2020
214
2021
287
2022
249
2023
269
2024
263
2025
177
2026
15

Keywords

cr.yp multilog.html NG dmitryfrank.com DESCRIPTION STDE something.log ELK DataDog rsyslog.com logs log systemd var logging ng files server stream file

Sample Comments

cassianoaquino Nov 26, 2013 View on HN

why not pointing access_log/error_log to fifos and use rsyslog/syslog-ng to read direct from it?

partycoder May 25, 2017 View on HN

That's what log aggregators are for.

cozzyd Dec 10, 2021 View on HN

I thought you just rely on rsyslog or journald for this stuff...

cmdrk Aug 22, 2023 View on HN

Doesn't the journald component of systemd do this? I seem to recall it was much reviled for exactly the problems you point out - that it is harder to work with than plaintext logs.

kryptiskt May 27, 2016 View on HN

Doesn't systemd do that with journald?

posix_me_less Feb 1, 2021 View on HN

It isn't right for server either. I want my server logs to be files in filesystem and readable with standard tools.

jmprspret Oct 4, 2023 View on HN

Looks really cool. Does this support standard syslogs as well? Or only journalctl logs?

backendanon Aug 8, 2023 View on HN

Sounds like systemd stuff. Why deal with systemd. Use Apache customized logging as the parent comment suggested.

otterley Mar 16, 2016 View on HN

Have you seen any syslog server implementations that are significantly more performant than journald?

bpicolo Sep 26, 2015 View on HN

Aka how pretty much everybody stores logs already.