systemd Developer Lennart Poettering lennart@poettering.net sd_journal_next 3 sd_journal_next sd_journal_previous sd_journal_next_skip sd_journal_previous_skip Advance or set back the read pointer in the journal #include <systemd/sd-journal.h> int sd_journal_next sd_journal* j int sd_journal_previous sd_journal* j int sd_journal_next_skip sd_journal* j uint64_t skip int sd_journal_previous_skip sd_journal* j uint64_t skip sd_journal_next() advances the read pointer into the journal by one entry. The only argument taken is a journal context object as allocated via sd_journal_open3. After successful invocation the entry may be read with functions such as sd_journal_get_data3. Similar, sd_journal_previous() sets the read pointer back one entry. sd_journal_next_skip() and sd_journal_previous_skip() advance/set back the read pointer by multiple entries at once, as specified in the skip parameter. The journal is strictly ordered by reception time, and hence advancing to the next entry guarantees that the entry then pointing to is later in time than then previous one, or has the same timestamp. Note that the SD_JOURNAL_FOREACH() macro may be used as a wrapper around sd_journal_seek_head3 and sd_journal_next() in order to make iteratring through the journal easier. See below for an example. Similar, SD_JOURNAL_FOREACH_BACKWARDS() may be used for iterating the journal in reverse order. The four calls return the number of entries advanced/set back on success or a negative errno-style error code. When the end (resp. beginning) of the journal is reached a number smaller than requested is returned. More specifically, if sd_journal_next() or sd_journal_previous() reach the end/beginning of the journal they will return 0, instead of 1 when they are successful. This should be considered an EOF marker. The sd_journal_next(), sd_journal_previous(), sd_journal_next_skip() and sd_journal_previous_skip() interfaces are available as shared library, which can be compiled and linked to with the libsystemd-journal pkg-config1 file. Iterating through the journal: #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> #include <systemd/sd-journal.h> int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { int r; sd_journal *j; r = sd_journal_open(&j, SD_JOURNAL_LOCAL_ONLY); if (r < 0) { fprintf(stderr, "Failed to open journal: %s\n", strerror(-r)); return 1; } SD_JOURNAL_FOREACH(j) { const char *d; size_t l; r = sd_journal_get_data(j, "MESSAGE", &d, &l); if (r < 0) { fprintf(stderr, "Failed to read message field: %s\n", strerror(-r)); continue; } printf("%.*s\n", (int) l, d); } sd_journal_close(j); return 0; } systemd1, sd-journal3, sd_journal_open3, sd_journal_get_data3