Bug 89781

Summary:	journal: 'quiet' kernel commandline option also lowers stored log verbosity
Product:	systemd	Reporter:	Alain Kalker <a.c.kalker>
Component:	general	Assignee:	systemd-bugs
Status:	RESOLVED NOTABUG	QA Contact:	systemd-bugs
Severity:	normal
Priority:	medium	CC:	a.c.kalker
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	x86-64 (AMD64)
OS:	Linux (All)
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:
Attachments:	Qemu boot log, with 'quiet' kernel commandline option Qemu boot log, without 'quiet' kernel commandline option

Description Alain Kalker 2015-03-26 16:59:36 UTC

When passing the 'quiet' kernel commandline option, not only does this quieten the console output, but it also lowers the verbosity of messages logged in the journal.

Configuration:

- Arch Linux x86_64, systemd (from [core] repo) version 218-2

Steps to reproduce:

- Start out with a default configuration in /etc/systemd/journald.conf, i.e. no values overridden.
- Boot the system with and without the 'quiet' kernel commandline option
- Compare the output of `journalctl -b`

Expected results:

- Both logs should contain messages up to verbosity level 'debug', as documented in journald.conf(5). In particular, messages of the form "Starting <unit>", "Started <unit>", etc. should always be logged.

Actual results:

- When booting with 'quiet', no messages of the form "Starting <unit>", etc. are logged for system services (they are logged for user services, though).

Comment 1 Alain Kalker 2015-03-26 17:11:52 UTC

Created attachment 114652 [details]
Qemu boot log, with 'quiet' kernel commandline option

Comment 2 Alain Kalker 2015-03-26 17:12:53 UTC

Created attachment 114653 [details]
Qemu boot log, without 'quiet' kernel commandline option

Comment 3 Alain Kalker 2015-03-26 17:48:27 UTC

From this most recent commit mentioning 'quiet'[1], I gather that it is indeed the intention for 'quiet' to only affect console output, not stored or forwarded output.

[1]: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/commit/?id=5e07a79e84ab8b045b9df1a2719f14fc84471a1d

Comment 4 Zbigniew Jedrzejewski-Szmek 2015-03-28 03:05:34 UTC

(In reply to Alain Kalker from comment #0)
> When passing the 'quiet' kernel commandline option, not only does this
> quieten the console output, but it also lowers the verbosity of messages
> logged in the journal.
Yes, that is intentional. 'quiet' and 'debug' are not symmetrical. 'debug' output is simply too verbose to put into the logs by default (all dbus connections are logged and watchdog messages and other junk which fills up the logs). So we do that only when explicitly requested with 'debug' or 'systemd.log_level='.

Comment 5 Alain Kalker 2015-03-28 08:21:39 UTC

Thanks for your explanation.
The issue appears to be resolved in systemd 219: 'quiet' only mutes output to the console but writes to the journal log at a normal level.

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