Bug 53582

Summary:	RFE: Add more switches to journalctl
Product:	systemd	Reporter:	Nicolas Michel <be.nicolas.michel>
Component:	general	Assignee:	systemd-bugs
Status:	RESOLVED INVALID	QA Contact:	systemd-bugs
Severity:	enhancement
Priority:	medium
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	Other
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:

Description Nicolas Michel 2012-08-16 09:43:11 UTC

Hello,

Since shell commands are not like coding API, the shorter the better (don't need to be explicit - switches are never intuitive: you known them otherwise there's the man). Furthermore, switches are often in 2 version : the longer and the shorter ones.
So it would be great adding some shortcut to existing features that are really too much long to type. Exemple:

journalctl -o cat _SYSTEMD_UNIT=syslog-ng.service

which is really too long for the purpose.

As an example, you could add -L (for long) as a shortcut to "-o cat" and -s as a shortcut for _SYSTEMD_UNIT so the command looks like :

"journalctl -L -s syslog-ng.service" which is really better.

AND it would be great having a shell autocompletion on the service name because syslog-ng.service is also a bit long to type and I'd want to use the magic TAB key ;) Currently, there is no shell completion on the targets name for journalctl.

These are details but the kind ones that can makes journalctl loved by users or not. Currently I find it a pain for a daily use.

Comment 1 Lennart Poettering 2012-10-17 17:21:33 UTC

There's "journactl -u" now, to specify units to match for.

Comment 2 Zbigniew Jedrzejewski-Szmek 2013-03-14 03:51:05 UTC

We have bash completion for both -o and -u.

Comment 3 Zbigniew Jedrzejewski-Szmek 2013-03-20 02:24:00 UTC

OK, it seems that we have a fairly comprehensive set of short syntaxes for commonly used options and/or completion. If anything is missing (please check http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/journalctl.html and http://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/tree/shell-completion/bash/journalctl?id=HEAD), please reopen with specific suggestions.

Use of freedesktop.org services, including Bugzilla, is subject to our Code of Conduct. How we collect and use information is described in our Privacy Policy.