failed to iterate through journal: bad message

Question

I received the following error trying to view logs on an embedded ARM board running Angstrom Linux with systemd.

# journalctl -f    
Failed to iterate through journal: Bad message

I searched the systemd documentation and didn't find any useful reference to this message or what to do to resolve it.

The filesystem is on an sdcard, so it's possible that it's caused by file corruption, although the system displays no other signs of this. Going in to /var/log/journal and removing all the files in there fixed the problem. This has got logging working again at the cost of losing all my previous log message.

What can be the underlying cause of this?

Any sign of disk errors in syslog? Will it pass a SMART check? — Tom O'Connor, Dec 06 '12 at 14:21
No sign of filesystem errors, it's on an SD card so SMART is impossible. — ndyer, Dec 06 '12 at 15:11
Oh, and -1 for not using a search engine, and for not including relevant details. — Michael Hampton, Dec 06 '12 at 16:00
This question shows zero effort on your part -- Google. Research. Tell us what you've done to try to debug this. We should not have to pull teeth to get adequate troubleshooting information. See [this meta question](http://meta.serverfault.com/questions/3608/how-can-i-ask-better-questions-on-server-fault) for some pointers. — voretaq7, Dec 06 '12 at 21:08

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 06 '12 at 15:59

2

It is a bug in your version of systemd that has since been fixed upstream.

answered Dec 06 '12 at 15:59

Michael Hampton

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failed to iterate through journal: bad message

1 Answers1