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This issue report feels like it ought to be accompanied by a fix. If you think you can do better than journald's existing format, propose a new one with tests t

This issue report feels like it ought to be accompanied by a fix. If you think you can do better than journald's existing format, propose a new one with tests to prove it. GenAI makes this much easier than it used to be.

lucb1e 2mo ago
Or you talk with the others first to see what kind of setup everyone thinks is good. I'd find it strange if someone barges into my project with a pull request that fundamentally changes the design of a major component
- otterley 2mo ago
  Sure, a concrete proposal first would be a good idea. That said, would you look a gift horse in the mouth?
  - ericpruitt 2mo ago
    Because you become responsible for feeding and taking said care of horse and dealing with any technical debt associated with it. If someone submits code to a project that I maintain that's going to make my life difficult in the future, I'm not going to accept it.
  - Brian_K_White 2mo ago
    It doesn't matter how free a turd sandwich is.
    - otterley 2mo ago
      There's no proposal that we can evaluate to determine whether it's a turd sandwich or not.
shawnz 2mo ago
Designing a new on-disk format seems like a pretty far reaching architectural decision... I don't think that's an appropriate target for a drive-by fix from a new contributor
- pineapplepizza6 2mo ago
  You could however choose to maintain a fork. If you had time. Few people do.
deepsun 2mo ago
Well, they are comparing in comments with syslog, and it does better, as you asked. Syslog was there for 46 years.
- otterley 2mo ago
  syslog doesn't have nearly the functionality that journald + journalctl does. Take a look at journalctl's man page: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/journalctl.html# https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/jour... See also the design rationale: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1IC9yOXj7j6cdLLxWEBAGRL6wl97tFxgjLUEHIX3MSTs/pub https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1IC9yOXj7j6cdLLxWEBAG... It's basically comparing an append-only fixed-format text file with a queryable database. Of course the former is going to be more performant on writes.
  - simoncion 2mo ago
    > syslog doesn't have nearly the functionality that journald + journalctl does. A huge feature list doesn't matter much if the software is bad. Given that journald still irrecoverably corrupts its logs even after all these years and -apparently- suffers from substantial write amplification, I'm gonna stick with my ordinary syslog implementations, thanks. Also, in regards to your original comment: > This issue report feels like it ought to be accompanied by a fix. This smells a lot like the "Don't come to me with problems, come to me with fixes." order that a lot of mid-level and director-level management really loved to make five, ten years back. [0] While this sounds like a hard-charging order and gives the impression that it's bringing much-needed discipline to lazy-ass subordinates, the truth of the matter is that its actual effect [1] is to get people to shut the fuck up about the company's problems. The job of most mid-level and nearly all director-level management is to do inter-organization coordination. Most low-level folks don't come to mid- or director-level management with problems they can solve. After all, if they could solve them, they would... talking to folks in that layer of management is usually a huge drag. Most low-level folks only come to these sorts of folks with issues that require inter-organization coordination! So, yeah... the only obligation of someone who's reporting a bug is to provide a reasonably well-written bug report accompanied with reproduction instructions and diagnostics that are as clearly written as is reasonably possible. Reporters of performance bugs are under no obligation to suggest how to eliminate the bug... especially not if the project they're reporting the bug against has both paid maintainers and claims it's the infrastructure on top of which all Linux systems should be built. Corporate-backed projects that make such grand claims put themselves in a radically different class than the one that covers hobby or small-time projects. [0] AIUI, it came out of Google, but my understanding might be incorrect. [1] ...regardless of whether or not that effect is intentional...
ValdikSS 2mo ago
>This issue report feels like it ought to be accompanied by a fix. systemd is a stewarded FOSS, which means there's a team behind it, who are getting paid, and develop this software with release cycles, backwards compatibility guarantees, architectural decisions, and such. These people know better. I usually only prepare fixes for FOSS one-man-show which have little to no maintenance, otherwise I prefer professionals to handle it. Sometimes "suggestion" PR is worse than a triaged issue IMO.
- p_l 2mo ago
  In this case, it's also a very ego-driven project. Honestly, the few times I went into systemd source (to deal with how they didn't document some critical information without which I couldn't ensure coexistence of other software, software needed for functionality systemd didn't expose), I found it a total mess - combined with very loud and explicit ways the decision of the "stewards" were defended by the team, I would be frankly wary of trying to contribute anything non-trivial.

lucb1e 2mo ago

Or you talk with the others first to see what kind of setup everyone thinks is good. I'd find it strange if someone barges into my project with a pull request that fundamentally changes the design of a major component

otterley 2mo ago
Sure, a concrete proposal first would be a good idea. That said, would you look a gift horse in the mouth?
- ericpruitt 2mo ago
  Because you become responsible for feeding and taking said care of horse and dealing with any technical debt associated with it. If someone submits code to a project that I maintain that's going to make my life difficult in the future, I'm not going to accept it.
- Brian_K_White 2mo ago
  It doesn't matter how free a turd sandwich is.
  - otterley 2mo ago
    There's no proposal that we can evaluate to determine whether it's a turd sandwich or not.

shawnz 2mo ago

Designing a new on-disk format seems like a pretty far reaching architectural decision... I don't think that's an appropriate target for a drive-by fix from a new contributor

pineapplepizza6 2mo ago
You could however choose to maintain a fork. If you had time. Few people do.

deepsun 2mo ago

Well, they are comparing in comments with syslog, and it does better, as you asked. Syslog was there for 46 years.

otterley 2mo ago
syslog doesn't have nearly the functionality that journald + journalctl does. Take a look at journalctl's man page: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/journalctl.html# https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/jour... See also the design rationale: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1IC9yOXj7j6cdLLxWEBAGRL6wl97tFxgjLUEHIX3MSTs/pub https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1IC9yOXj7j6cdLLxWEBAG... It's basically comparing an append-only fixed-format text file with a queryable database. Of course the former is going to be more performant on writes.
- simoncion 2mo ago
  > syslog doesn't have nearly the functionality that journald + journalctl does. A huge feature list doesn't matter much if the software is bad. Given that journald still irrecoverably corrupts its logs even after all these years and -apparently- suffers from substantial write amplification, I'm gonna stick with my ordinary syslog implementations, thanks. Also, in regards to your original comment: > This issue report feels like it ought to be accompanied by a fix. This smells a lot like the "Don't come to me with problems, come to me with fixes." order that a lot of mid-level and director-level management really loved to make five, ten years back. [0] While this sounds like a hard-charging order and gives the impression that it's bringing much-needed discipline to lazy-ass subordinates, the truth of the matter is that its actual effect [1] is to get people to shut the fuck up about the company's problems. The job of most mid-level and nearly all director-level management is to do inter-organization coordination. Most low-level folks don't come to mid- or director-level management with problems they can solve. After all, if they could solve them, they would... talking to folks in that layer of management is usually a huge drag. Most low-level folks only come to these sorts of folks with issues that require inter-organization coordination! So, yeah... the only obligation of someone who's reporting a bug is to provide a reasonably well-written bug report accompanied with reproduction instructions and diagnostics that are as clearly written as is reasonably possible. Reporters of performance bugs are under no obligation to suggest how to eliminate the bug... especially not if the project they're reporting the bug against has both paid maintainers and claims it's the infrastructure on top of which all Linux systems should be built. Corporate-backed projects that make such grand claims put themselves in a radically different class than the one that covers hobby or small-time projects. [0] AIUI, it came out of Google, but my understanding might be incorrect. [1] ...regardless of whether or not that effect is intentional...

ValdikSS 2mo ago

>This issue report feels like it ought to be accompanied by a fix. systemd is a stewarded FOSS, which means there's a team behind it, who are getting paid, and develop this software with release cycles, backwards compatibility guarantees, architectural decisions, and such. These people know better. I usually only prepare fixes for FOSS one-man-show which have little to no maintenance, otherwise I prefer professionals to handle it. Sometimes "suggestion" PR is worse than a triaged issue IMO.

p_l 2mo ago
In this case, it's also a very ego-driven project. Honestly, the few times I went into systemd source (to deal with how they didn't document some critical information without which I couldn't ensure coexistence of other software, software needed for functionality systemd didn't expose), I found it a total mess - combined with very loud and explicit ways the decision of the "stewards" were defended by the team, I would be frankly wary of trying to contribute anything non-trivial.