Journal polling not working on Ubuntu 24.04 #146

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1. jsou

   added 2 commits that reference this issue on Aug 6, 2025

   tests: update rsyslog test to work

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   801599e

   tests: update rsyslog test to work

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   c5d7612
2. jmanojlovich commented on Nov 11, 2025

   

   jmanojlovich

   on Nov 11, 2025

   Last edited by jmanojlovich

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   @SkytAsul My testing confirmed that every version of Ubuntu from 24.04 has this issue. I did find a workaround, add j.get_previous() immediately after j.seek_tail() in your example code.

   I was inspired by looking at this C example code which mentioned having an issue with calling sd_journal_next() immediately after sd_journal_seek_tail().

   Attached is the working version of your example Python code and an expanded version of the linked C code above to have the equivalent functionality.

   example_journal_reader.py
   example_journal_reader.c
3. orzel commented on Jun 28, 2026

   

   orzel

   on Jun 28, 2026

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   I dont know about ubuntu, but on debian 12.2.0, using python3-systemd (235-1+b2), none of this work.

   Typically this example (from the current main github page)

   from systemd import journal
   from datetime import datetime, timedelta
   j = journal.Reader()
   j.seek_realtime(datetime.now() - timedelta(minutes=20))
   for entry in j:
       print(entry['MESSAGE'])
   

   Return either nothing, or few (4) random lines, completely unrelated to what journalctl -f outputs. For example, connecting with ssh will add lines to output of journalctl -f, but none (or the same previous old) lines will be printed by this script.

   Trying polling in a lot of different ways, including the original code of this thread, my own original code, and the example_journal_reader.py with an added get_previous() : none of them work. Nothing is displayed. At best entries are all {}, most of the time there are none. Still while double-checking with journalctl -f.