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tpfkanep

Member

From: South Africa

Registered: 2009-12-15

Posts: 121

[Solved] pacman.log - file type?

I'm trying to interrogate [pacman.log], with [grep] and i keep on getting this message: Binary file /var/log/pacman.log matches at end of output. If I do a

file /var/log/pacman

I get /var/log/pacman.log: data.

I also cannot open pacman.log in nano [ File '/var/log/pacman.log' is unwritable ]. Is this normal?

Last edited by tpfkanep (2019-12-14 12:40:16)

WorMzy

Forum Moderator

From: Scotland

Registered: 2010-06-16

Posts: 11,836

Website

Re: [Solved] pacman.log - file type?

Nope, it should be entirely text.

My guess is it got corrupted at some point (possibly due to an unclean shutdown during an transaction). A quick google search for "why does my text file show as binary" leads me to https://superuser.com/questions/324867/ … s-a-binary

Do the solutions there work for you? I would make a copy of the file before trying to fix it, just in case.

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tpfkanep

Member

From: South Africa

Registered: 2009-12-15

Posts: 121

Re: [Solved] pacman.log - file type?

Thanks for the reply. I have had to brute force shutdowns recently and use <Alt><SysRq> <REISUB> on a number of occassions due to what looks like graphical issues as per thread.

Edit:

tr -d '\000' < filein > fileout

worked.

Last edited by tpfkanep (2019-12-14 12:39:58)