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

[Josh Triplett]

On Sun, 04 Sep 2016 10:59:07 +0200 Martin Steigerwald <Martin at Lichtvoll.de> wrote:
> 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

Works fine here with systemd 231-5: "systemctl status" uses less, but it
interprets color escape sequences, and exits if the output fits entirely
on the screen.  Can you provide your environment (output of "env"), and
in particular the values of $LESS and $PAGER?  And can you check if this
occurs in another terminal, such as xterm?