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-rw-r--r--man/systemd-journald.service.xml54
1 files changed, 48 insertions, 6 deletions
diff --git a/man/systemd-journald.service.xml b/man/systemd-journald.service.xml
index 2810638bc2..559ef1090a 100644
--- a/man/systemd-journald.service.xml
+++ b/man/systemd-journald.service.xml
@@ -70,19 +70,18 @@
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>Kernel log messages, via kmsg</para></listitem>
- <listitem><para>Simple system log messages, via the libc
- <citerefentry project='man-pages'><refentrytitle>syslog</refentrytitle><manvolnum>3</manvolnum></citerefentry>
+ <listitem><para>Simple system log messages, via the <filename>libc</filename> <citerefentry
+ project='man-pages'><refentrytitle>syslog</refentrytitle><manvolnum>3</manvolnum></citerefentry>
call</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Structured system log messages via the native
Journal API, see
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>sd_journal_print</refentrytitle><manvolnum>4</manvolnum></citerefentry></para></listitem>
- <listitem><para>Standard output and standard error of system
- services</para></listitem>
+ <listitem><para>Standard output and standard error of service units. For further details see
+ below.</para></listitem>
- <listitem><para>Audit records, via the audit
- subsystem</para></listitem>
+ <listitem><para>Audit records, originating from the kernel audit subsystem</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>The daemon will implicitly collect numerous metadata fields
@@ -112,6 +111,49 @@ systemd-tmpfiles --create --prefix /var/log/journal</programlisting>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>
+ <title>Stream logging</title>
+
+ <para>The systemd service manager invokes all service processes with standard output and standard error connected
+ to the journal by default. This behaviour may be altered via the
+ <varname>StandardOutput=</varname>/<varname>StandardError=</varname> unit file settings, see
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.exec</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry> for details. The
+ journal converts the log byte stream received this way into individual log records, splitting the stream at newline
+ (<literal>\n</literal>, ASCII <constant>10</constant>) and <constant>NUL</constant> bytes.</para>
+
+ <para>If <filename>systemd-journald.service</filename> is stopped, the stream connections associated with all
+ services are terminated. Further writes to those streams by the service will result in <constant>EPIPE</constant>
+ errors. In order to react gracefully in this case it is recommended that programs logging to standard output/error
+ ignore such errors. If the the <constant>SIGPIPE</constant> UNIX signal handler is not blocked or turned off, such
+ write attempts will also result in such process signals being generated, see
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>signal</refentrytitle><manvolnum>7</manvolnum></citerefentry>. To mitigate this issue,
+ systemd service manager explicitly turns off the <constant>SIGPIPE</constant> signal for all invoked processes by
+ default (this may be changed for each unit individually via the <varname>IgnoreSIGPIPE=</varname> option, see
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.exec</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry> for
+ details). After the standard output/standard error streams have been terminated they may not be recovered until the
+ services they are associated with are restarted. Note that during normal operation,
+ <filename>systemd-journald.service</filename> stores copies of the file descriptors for those streams in the
+ service manager. If <filename>systemd-journald.service</filename> is restarted using <command>systemctl
+ restart</command> or equivalent operation instead of a pair of separate <command>systemctl stop</command> and
+ <command>systemctl start</command> commands (or equivalent operations), these stream connections are not terminated
+ and survive the restart. It is thus safe to restart <filename>systemd-journald.service</filename>, but stopping it
+ is not recommended.</para>
+
+ <para>Note that the log record metadata for records transferred via such standard output/error streams reflect the
+ metadata of the peer the stream was originally created for. If the stream connection is passed on to other
+ processes (such as further child processes forked off the main service process), the log records will not reflect
+ their metadata, but will continue to describe the original process. This is different from the other logging
+ transports listed above, which are inherently record based and where the metadata is always associated with the
+ individual record.</para>
+
+ <para>In addition to the the implicit standard output/error logging of services, stream logging is also available
+ via the <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-cat</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry> command
+ line tool.</para>
+
+ <para> Currently, the number of parallel log streams <filename>systemd-journald</filename> will accept is limited
+ to 4096.</para>
+ </refsect1>
+
+ <refsect1>
<title>Signals</title>
<variablelist>