Bug 5723

Summary: Some strange characters in log when using journalctl to query the log
Product: [Runtime] System Startup Reporter: Yi Zhao <yi.zhao>
Component: system-startupAssignee: Chen Qi <Qi.Chen>
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX QA Contact:
Severity: normal    
Priority: Low CC: ke.zou, kevin.tian, richard.purdie, sgw
Version: 1.6   
Target Milestone: 1.7   
Hardware: x86   
OS: Multiple   
Whiteboard:
OS type for building Yocto: --- Type of Regression: ---
Verified: Documentation change: No (bug/feature does not impact docs)

Description Yi Zhao 2014-01-14 08:14:37 UTC 
git rev: master/1b636173ca88e5ccca1992f9a12367a1189fa674

Steps:
1. Add the following lines in conf/local.conf
DISTRO_FEATURES_append = " systemd"
VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_init_manager = "systemd"
DISTRO_FEATURES_BACKFILL_CONSIDERED = "sysvinit"

2. bitbake core-image-sato

When using journalctl to query the log, there are some strange characters in the log:
#############################################
Jan 14 07:59:34 qemux86 kernel: ACPI: Local APIC address 0xfee00000
Jan 14 07:59:34 qemux86 kernel: [[1;39m0MB HIGHMEM available.[[0m
Jan 14 07:59:34 qemux86 kernel: [[1;39m255MB LOWMEM available.[[0m
Jan 14 07:59:34 qemux86 kernel:   mapped low ram: 0 - 0fffe000
Jan 14 07:59:34 qemux86 kernel:   low ram: 0 - 0fffe000
Jan 14 07:59:34 qemux86 kernel: BRK [0x01c15000, 0x01c15fff] PGTABLE
Jan 14 07:59:34 qemux86 kernel: [[1;39mZone ranges:[[0m
Jan 14 07:59:34 qemux86 kernel: [[1;39m  DMA      [mem 0x00001000-0x00ffffff][[0m
Jan 14 07:59:34 qemux86 kernel: [[1;39m  Normal   [mem 0x01000000-0x0fffdfff][[0m
Jan 14 07:59:34 qemux86 kernel: [[1;39m  HighMem  empty[[0m
Jan 14 07:59:34 qemux86 kernel: [[1;39mMovable zone start for each node[[0m
Jan 14 07:59:34 qemux86 kernel: [[1;39mEarly memory node ranges[[0m
Jan 14 07:59:34 qemux86 kernel: [[1;39m  node   0: [mem 0x00001000-0x0009efff][[0m
Jan 14 07:59:34 qemux86 kernel: [[1;39m  node   0: [mem 0x00100000-0x0fffdfff][[0m
Jan 14 07:59:34 qemux86 kernel: On node 0 totalpages: 65436
###############################################
Comment 1 Chen Qi 2014-01-17 02:10:38 UTC 
The `less' command from busybox doesn't interpret these characters.
Installing the less package into the image will solve this problem.

As journal is a key functionality of systemd, I think we'd better add the 'less' package to the RDEPENDS of systemd.

//Chen Qi
Comment 2 Richard Purdie 2014-02-10 12:53:02 UTC 
Adding less as a dependency of systemd is a bit of a hack.

I believe busybox implemented some better handling of this?

I'd really prefer to see:

a) busybox handling of the escape sequences handled (backport the patch?)
and/or
b) systemd learning not to use the sequences on things that aren't terminals
Comment 3 Chen Qi 2014-11-11 02:05:20 UTC 
It's not a big problem. '--no-pager' can almost always work.