• The journalctl command in Linux is used to query and display logs from the systemd journal, which is the logging system provided by the systemd init system.
  • journalctl is a tool for querying and displaying logs collected by the systemd logging system (the systemd-journald service).
  • In addition to searching your logs with the less key commands, you can invoke journalctl with options that filter your log messages before they are displayed.
  • Default location of journald logs is /var/log/journal directory. Type journalctl in the terminal, it will show the journal logs in chronological order.
  • With different parsers, different output formats can be created from the same binary source data. There are several different formats that journalctl can use.
  • Syntax and Basic Usage. The journalctl command is the primary interface for accessing system logs stored in the systemd journal.
  • A complete beginner's guide to using journalctl commands for viewing, filtering and analyzing journal logs in Linux.
  • In this tutorial, we will guide you on how to install and use the ‘journalctl’ command on your Linux system.
  • Before we begin talking about how to use Linux journalctl command, let's briefly understand-What is journalctl Command ?
  • journalctl may be used to query the contents of the systemd(1) journal as written by systemd-journald.service(8).