I had it for a while. Then systemd came and everything changed. Can’t just grep logs and won’t bother learning how to handle that “journal”. Some programs don’t write logs at all, they just crash with an indicator in a systray that something crashed (the most useful info in the world, /s). Linux was being made by hackers who know how to debug things, not anymore. Now it’s new kids raised on rainbow unicorn nonsense. I feel myself in linux like I’m in early windows now, so what’s the benefit?
Here's the command it sounds like you're looking for:
`journalctl --grep="search string"`
You can limit it by time period like this:
`journalctl --since=-6h --grep="search string"`
Note that there's a separate user journal (such as for things that show up with an indication in the systray), accessible like this when in a shell as that user:
Also, if you really want, SysV still exists and works. You can setup a system with SysV and syslog-ng and have the good ol' service run system and flat log files back.
Thanks, but today I avoid troubleshooting it, I just accept the roadblocks and escape to my windows+msys2 installation as soon as possible. I find this combination a better gnu-based system and better upside / downside balance, which is all I need on desktop. Even logs usually get written to text files cause windows system logs are rarely used by regular apps and unixy services.
I’m not a gnu vs linux pedant, but gnu never let me down like that, and linux is really just an implementation detail underneath that I’m free to replace without compromising key functionality.
