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If we dump journalctl logs, we should dump them in .journal binary format, not json #9

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@bleggett

Dumping all journalctl in raw .json format makes things more difficult to eyeball and reason about chronologically for me - it's better for jq parsing if you already know what you're looking for, but harder for thinking/eyeballing/studying the holistic log - I prefer flat log format for this.

Suggest we split the difference and capture journalctl logs in the original .journal binary format, and save those in the bundle - from those, anyone with the bundle is free to export those .journal files to the textual representation that's most useful for them locally - json, flat, or anything else the journalctl binary supports.

This also makes it easier to export time-based subsets of the log as well.

Activity

  1. changed the title [-]If we dump `journalctl` logs, we should dump them in `.journal` binary format[/-] [+]If we dump `journalctl` logs, we should dump them in `.journal` binary format, not `json`[/+] on May 11, 2026
  2. bleggett commented on May 20, 2026

    @bleggett
    ContributorAuthor

    #10

    turns out you can't export to the indexed journald binary format directly, but that's fine - journald has a specific, textual export format which you can export, can convert to any supported output format directly, and can import back to an indexed binary format if you really need it.

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