Bug#836580: systemd: systemctl status pipes through less with escape sequences not applied

[Martin Steigerwald]

Package: systemd
Version: 231-5
Severity: minor

Dear Martin, dear Michael, dear Systemd maintainers,

systemctl status for a long time just printed the status directly onto the
terminal (Konsole in my case). But since also quite a while it uses less on
my system, even tough the output is not larger than one page.

Also the color escape sequences are not executed by less, leavinge me with
something like:

^[[0;1;32m●^[[0m atopacct.service - Atop process accounting daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/atopacct.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: ^[[0;1;32mactive (running)^[[0m since So 2016-09-04 10:48:07 CEST; 1s ago
     Docs: man:atopacctd(8)
  Process: 5032 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/atopacctd (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 5034 (atopacctd)
    Tasks: 1 (limit: 4915)
   CGroup: /system.slice/atopacct.service
           └─5034 /usr/sbin/atopacctd

Sep 04 10:48:07 merkaba systemd[1]: Starting Atop process accounting daemon...
Sep 04 10:48:07 merkaba systemd[1]: atopacct.service: PID file /run/atopacctd.pid not readable (yet?) after start: No such file or directory
Sep 04 10:48:07 merkaba atopacctd[5034]: Version: 2.2-3 - 2015/06/25 11:07:21 […]
Sep 04 10:48:07 merkaba systemd[1]: Started Atop process accounting daemon.
Sep 04 10:48:07 merkaba atopacctd[5034]: ^[[0;1;39mreactivate process accounting^[[0m


I am fine with piping longer listings like "systemctl" or "systemctl status"
output through less.

I am aware I can disable piping through less on an ad-hoc at least by adding
"| cat" to the command line. At it seems I can also alias "systemctl" to
"systemctl --no-pager"¹. And I bet it was upstream making piping through less
unconditional.

But still even with piping through it would at least be nice if it applies
escape sequences.

Anyway for myself I think I will just system-globally alias systemctl back to
more sanity than using less for half a page of output.

[1] Bug 713567 - Output of 'systemctl --all' pipes through 'less' by default 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=713567

Thanks,
Martin

-- Package-specific info:

-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (200, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.8.0-rc4-tp520-btrfstrim+ (SMP w/4 CPU cores; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)

Versions of packages systemd depends on:
ii  adduser         3.115
ii  libacl1         2.2.52-3
ii  libapparmor1    2.10.95-4
ii  libaudit1       1:2.6.6-1
ii  libblkid1       2.28.1-1
ii  libc6           2.23-5
ii  libcap2         1:2.25-1
ii  libcap2-bin     1:2.25-1
ii  libcryptsetup4  2:1.7.0-2
ii  libgcrypt20     1.7.3-1
ii  libgpg-error0   1.24-1
ii  libidn11        1.33-1
ii  libip4tc0       1.6.0-3
ii  libkmod2        22-1.1
ii  liblzma5        5.1.1alpha+20120614-2.1
ii  libmount1       2.28.1-1
ii  libpam0g        1.1.8-3.3
ii  libseccomp2     2.3.1-2
ii  libselinux1     2.5-3
ii  libsystemd0     231-5
ii  mount           2.28.1-1
ii  util-linux      2.28.1-1

Versions of packages systemd recommends:
ii  dbus            1.10.10-1
ii  libpam-systemd  231-5

Versions of packages systemd suggests:
ii  policykit-1        0.105-16
ii  systemd-container  231-5
ii  systemd-ui         3-4

Versions of packages systemd is related to:
ii  udev  231-5

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/systemd/resolved.conf changed [not included]

-- no debconf information