[TUHS] [tuhs] The Unix shell: a 50-year view

[Warner Losh]

On Sat, Jul 3, 2021 at 11:45 AM Theodore Ts'o <tytso at mit.edu> wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 03, 2021 at 09:20:57AM -0400, Dan Cross wrote:
> >
> > Systemd is both good and bad.
>
> I agree with most of what you assess as "good" and "bad" with systemd.
> However...
>
> > It uses ersatz data formats that are abjectly
> > horrible. It uses binary logging, which means that one cannot use the
> full
> > complement of Unix text filters to inspect logs....
>
> To be fair, systemd isn't the first.  BSD's sar program uses a binary
> log file.
>

You mean System V's sar program? BSD has never had a sar program.
It's not in any of the CSRG releases, nor in any of {Free,Net,Open}BSD
systems that are around today.

It first appeared in System Vr1, and was in each of the following releases
if the listings of files on the net are any indication.


> I'm not sure whether it's BSD's fault or only after it was pulled into
> the systat package for Linux, but the binary format for the sar file
> is (a) not self-describing, (b) not backwards compatible, and (c) not
> stable between different versions, such that if you copy /var/log/sa/saNN
> the files from one system and try to interpret it on another system, you
> need to make sure that other system has the same version of sar installed.
>

Sounds awful...

Warner
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