How can I keep long strings from truncating in terminal? For example if I run
journalctl -xn
There's a lot of text that I cannot read. I am open to using other programs/tools.
asked Sep 12, 2015 at 2:18
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26Who came up with the idea to truncate the output anyways?– j4hangirCommented Dec 2, 2020 at 20:09
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8 Answers
From the journalctl manpage:
The output is paged through less by default, and long lines are
"truncated" to screen width. The hidden part can be viewed by using the
left-arrow and right-arrow keys. Paging can be disabled; see the
--no-pager option and the "Environment" section below.
If you don't want to constantly be using the left and right arrow keys, simply pipe it directly to less:
$ journalctl -xn | less
This will wrap lines that are too long for your terminal (the default behavior of less, which journalctl overrides).
Or, of course, if you don't mind possibly having to use your terminal's scrollback, you could use no pager at all:
$ journalctl -xn --no-pager
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13This is really frustrating. If pager is set to
less, andLESSdoes not include-S, journalctl should not be applying-Sto the invocation ofless!! That is, setting PAGER=less and LESS=$x (where $x is any string that does not contain S) should give the desired behavior. Commented Nov 11, 2018 at 13:19 -
5That is, journalctl should honor LESS, and the user should not have to also set SYSTEMD_LESS! (Apologies, doorknob, this is a bit of a rant that probably doesn't belong as a comment to your answer) Commented Nov 11, 2018 at 13:21
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Silly William. Mr. Pottering knows what's best for you, and if you don't like it, you are obviously wrong.</rant> Commented Oct 1, 2019 at 17:21
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2
I also do:
journalctl -xn | less
But you can also set the SYSTEMD_LESS environment variable:
SYSTEMD_LESS=FRXMK journalctl -xn
# Or even
# SYSTEMD_LESS="" journalctl -xn
# The environment variable needs to be there, but can be the empty string
I got that from: [systemd-devel] [PATCH] pager: wrap long lines by default
Set it in your .bashrc and be done with it! :-)
That systemd needs to setup less specially and doesn't just honor the less defaults and the LESS environment seems a little arrogant to me, but hey, this works...
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SYSTEMD_LESS support is only recently added, e.g CentOS 7 does not have a version that supports it– jnasCommented Nov 19, 2015 at 9:02
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2Great solution, I also added
Defaults env_keep += "LESS SYSTEMD_LESS"to/etc/sudoers. It's for those times when I accidentally putsudoin front of e.g.systemctl status. Commented Sep 14, 2018 at 17:51 -
2It's not merely "a little arrogant", it's incredibly annoying. I hope it's not arrogance, but ignorance that drives this behavior. Commented Nov 11, 2018 at 13:22
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2Hmmm. lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/2014-February/… Commented Nov 12, 2018 at 12:58
If the program already uses less (if not, pipe the output to it), you can enable/disable line wrapping by typing -S (in less), This works for other less options as well.
answered Sep 12, 2015 at 8:22
Note also that:
journalctl -f
will show you all the latest as it comes in and wrap like any normal human being (or even sysadmin) would expect to allow easy reading, copy-pasting, and everything else.
This is the command I use for CentOS 7, which preserves coloring and wraps lines:
SYSTEMD_PAGER="less -r" journalctl
$ SYSTEMD_PAGER="less +-S" journalctl
+ executes command on start and -S disable chopping.
You can also set this value for a session or save in rc/profile script.
I type in terminal,
journalctl | more, works great for me then I use arrows up or down.
The problem arises because journalctl's default for $SYSTEMD_LESS is "FRSXMK" (from the manpage), and less's -S "Causes lines longer than the screen width to be chopped (truncated) rather than wrapped."
The simplest way to achieve what you want is to use the --no-pager option. But if you pipe the output to a pager like less or more anyway, even this isn't necessary.
