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

[Martin Steigerwald]

Am Sonntag, 4. September 2016, 14:47:50 CEST schrieb 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?

Thanks for your answer Josh. I missed it first seems it was sortet more 
downwards due to old date:


merkaba:~> systemctl status
merkaba:~> echo $LESS
 -w
merkaba:~> echo $PAGER

I do not know who has put that "-w" into LESS variable.

But removing it doesn´t help:

merkaba:~> unset LESS
merkaba:~> systemctl status
^[[0;1;31m●^[[0m merkaba
    State: ^[[0;1;31mdegraded^[[0m
     Jobs: 0 queued
   Failed: 2 units
    Since: So 2016-09-25 00:35:01 CEST; 1 day 11h ago
   CGroup: /


Same in xterm.

merkaba:~> apt-show-versions | egrep "^less|^systemd:" | grep amd64
less:amd64/sid 481-2.1 uptodate
systemd:amd64/sid 231-7 uptodate

Thank you,
-- 
Martin