Lately I've been having trouble with Bookworm, on both a Pi5
and a Pi2B (32 bit), in which the Raspberry menu is used to
launch applications but seemingly nothing happens. No error
message pops up, it's as if I never even tried. Presumably
something had a fatal error, but where should I look for
the epitaph?

This happens most often with Firefox and Chromium browsers,
but occasionally happens with things like LX Terminal, which
I'd expect to be more robust.

There doesn't seem to be a /var/log/messages, as I'm accustomed
to checking, and ISTR Windows used a dedicated application for
watching system messages. Is there such a beast in Bookworm?

I haven't yet hooked up a serial console cable but could if that's
the only way to see what happened.

Thanks for reading!

bob prohaska


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 08/07/2026 18:26, bp@www.zefox.net wrote:

Lately I've been having trouble with Bookworm, on both a Pi5
and a Pi2B (32 bit), in which the Raspberry menu is used to
launch applications but seemingly nothing happens. No error
message pops up, it's as if I never even tried. Presumably
something had a fatal error, but where should I look for
the epitaph?

You could dredge through systemd logs.

This happens most often with Firefox and Chromium browsers,
but occasionally happens with things like LX Terminal, which
I'd expect to be more robust.

It is unclear as to exactly what you are doing.
Wjat code is being launched and exactly how?

There doesn't seem to be a /var/log/messages, as I'm accustomed
to checking, and ISTR Windows used a dedicated application for
watching system messages. Is there such a beast in Bookworm?

I haven't yet hooked up a serial console cable but could if that's
the only way to see what happened.

ssh?

Thanks for reading!

bob prohaska

--
Gun Control: The law that ensures that only criminals have guns.


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

bp@www.zefox.net writes:

Lately I've been having trouble with Bookworm, on both a Pi5
and a Pi2B (32 bit), in which the Raspberry menu is used to
launch applications but seemingly nothing happens. No error
message pops up, it's as if I never even tried. Presumably
something had a fatal error, but where should I look for
the epitaph?

This happens most often with Firefox and Chromium browsers,
but occasionally happens with things like LX Terminal, which
I'd expect to be more robust.

There doesn't seem to be a /var/log/messages, as I'm accustomed
to checking, and ISTR Windows used a dedicated application for
watching system messages. Is there such a beast in Bookworm?

Standard error from applications launched from the desktop historically
(and at least to some extent, still) goes to a file in your home
directory. Watch it with:

tail -f ~/.xsession-errors

Some things log to the user journal:

journalctl --user --follow

Depending on the cause of the problem the kernel log may also be
informative:

journalctl --dmesg --follow

Thank you very much!!

bob prohaska


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

bp@www.zefox.net writes:

Lately I've been having trouble with Bookworm, on both a Pi5
and a Pi2B (32 bit), in which the Raspberry menu is used to
launch applications but seemingly nothing happens. No error
message pops up, it's as if I never even tried. Presumably
something had a fatal error, but where should I look for
the epitaph?

This happens most often with Firefox and Chromium browsers,
but occasionally happens with things like LX Terminal, which
I'd expect to be more robust.

There doesn't seem to be a /var/log/messages, as I'm accustomed
to checking, and ISTR Windows used a dedicated application for
watching system messages. Is there such a beast in Bookworm?

Standard error from applications launched from the desktop historically
(and at least to some extent, still) goes to a file in your home
directory. Watch it with:

tail -f ~/.xsession-errors

Some things log to the user journal:

journalctl --user --follow

Depending on the cause of the problem the kernel log may also be
informative:

journalctl --dmesg --follow

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Thu, 9 Jul 2026 18:40:37 +0100, druck wrote:

Unfortunately due an onset of idiocy at Pi towers, starting with
Bookworm they chose to remove rsyslog and it's look-at-with-anything
textual logs, leaving you with the aberration of journald binary
logging and the need to learn the incomprehensible incantations of journalctl.

Luckily you can readily reinstall the righteous rsyslog package, so
it works like Linux (and UNIX) is meant to work.

Or you could run some other distro whose defaults are more to your
liking. Gods forbid you might have to make configuration changes
afterwards, eh?

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

bp@www.zefox.net writes:

Lately I've been having trouble with Bookworm, on both a Pi5
and a Pi2B (32 bit), in which the Raspberry menu is used to
launch applications but seemingly nothing happens. No error
message pops up, it's as if I never even tried. Presumably
something had a fatal error, but where should I look for
the epitaph?

This happens most often with Firefox and Chromium browsers,
but occasionally happens with things like LX Terminal, which
I'd expect to be more robust.

There doesn't seem to be a /var/log/messages, as I'm accustomed
to checking, and ISTR Windows used a dedicated application for
watching system messages. Is there such a beast in Bookworm?

Standard error from applications launched from the desktop historically
(and at least to some extent, still) goes to a file in your home
directory. Watch it with:

tail -f ~/.xsession-errors

Some things log to the user journal:

journalctl --user --follow

Depending on the cause of the problem the kernel log may also be
informative:

journalctl --dmesg --follow

Thank you!!!

bob prohaska


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Thu, 9 Jul 2026 18:40:37 +0100, druck wrote:

Unfortunately due an onset of idiocy at Pi towers, starting with
Bookworm they chose to remove rsyslog and it's look-at-with-anything textual logs, leaving you with the aberration of journald binary
logging and the need to learn the incomprehensible incantations of journalctl.

Luckily you can readily reinstall the righteous rsyslog package, so
it works like Linux (and UNIX) is meant to work.

Or you could run some other distro whose defaults are more to your
liking. Gods forbid you might have to make configuration changes
afterwards, eh?

I manage 13 (I just counted them) systems of my own running a mix of
Raspbian (or whatever it's called now), Debian and a couple of Ubuntu.

I maintain a mercurial repository of the changes I've done in /etc on
all of them. One thing in particular is that **all** systems have
logging switched from systemd's journal to rsyslog. The same changed /etc/systemd/journald.conf is on all systems and I've installed
rsyslog. Job done and it's dead easy to do the same on any new system.

--
Chris Green
·

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:42:08 +0100, Chris Green wrote:

I manage 13 (I just counted them) systems of my own running a mix of
Raspbian (or whatever it's called now), Debian and a couple of
Ubuntu.

One thing in particular is that **all** systems have logging
switched from systemd's journal to rsyslog.

I?m sure that works OK for system logging (except for the timestamp
issue).

But remember, the systemd journal works for per-user-session logging,
too.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

druck <news@druck.org.uk> writes:

bp@www.zefox.net wrote:

There doesn't seem to be a /var/log/messages, as I'm accustomed
to checking, and ISTR Windows used a dedicated application for
watching system messages. Is there such a beast in Bookworm?

Unfortunately due an onset of idiocy at Pi towers, starting with
Bookworm they chose to remove rsyslog and it's look-at-with-anything
textual logs,

RPi OS is following its Debian upstream here.

leaving you with the aberration of journald binary logging and the
need to learn the incomprehensible incantations of journalctl.

I don?t recognize the description of journalctl as ?incomprehensible incantations?. It doesn?t seem any more opaque than most basic Unix
commands to me. Comparing old and new:

tail -f /var/log/messages journalctl -f
grep wotsit /var/log/messages journalctl | grep wotsit
or journalctl -g wotsit
less /var/log/messages journalctl
grep kernel: /var/log/messages journalctl -k

You might have to spend a couple of minutes skimming ?journalctl --help?
or some documentation to learn it, but the same was true of tail, grep,
etc; you?ve just already done that and got used to it.

If you really want ?incomprehensible incantations? try ffmpeg.

Luckily you can readily reinstall the righteous rsyslog package, so it
works like Linux (and UNIX) is meant to work.

Does ?righteous? indicate that the attachment to syslog is religious
rather than practical?

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:42:08 +0100, Chris Green wrote:

I manage 13 (I just counted them) systems of my own running a mix of Raspbian (or whatever it's called now), Debian and a couple of
Ubuntu.

One thing in particular is that **all** systems have logging
switched from systemd's journal to rsyslog.

I?m sure that works OK for system logging (except for the timestamp
issue).

But remember, the systemd journal works for per-user-session logging,
too.

Since I'm the only user 'per-user' logging isn't all that significant.
`

--
Chris Green
·

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sat, 11 Jul 2026 09:31:20 +0100, Chris Green wrote:

Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:42:08 +0100, Chris Green wrote:

One thing in particular is that **all** systems have logging
switched from systemd's journal to rsyslog.

I?m sure that works OK for system logging (except for the timestamp
issue).

But remember, the systemd journal works for per-user-session logging,
too.

Since I'm the only user 'per-user' logging isn't all that significant.

It is for users of GUI apps, which is most Linux desktop users.

That includes the poster who asked the question that started this
thread.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Wed, 15 Jul 2026 17:49:13 +0100, druck wrote:

That's the easy stuff, compare journald.conf with logrotate, and
then find that half the vacuum options don't even work correctly. I
have to manually clean out in-memory logs every few weeks so it
doesn't get full, which affects random stuff.

Never had any trouble with the systemd journal. None whatsoever.
Whether on client machines (running Debian Stable), or my own (running
Debian Unstable).

I suspect the problem is with your distro.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

bp@www.zefox.net writes:

After opening windows with all three commands running I tried to
start a program that sometimes fails silently. In this particular
case it didn't fail, starting normally. However, no extra output
was displayed in any of the monitoring windows. Should I have
seen any output from any of these commands during a successful
application start?

Not necessarily. Some programs are chatty, but often if there?s nothing
wrong then there?s no output.

FWIW, the command run was from the raspberry>accessories menu,
it's called owon-vds-tiny and it runs control software for a
USB oscilloscope. When run from the command line it emits
a considerable flow of status information to the controlling
terminal.

You would expect that to go _somewhere_ when started from a menu, so if
you?re not seeing it at all then there?s certainly a question to answer.
(It?s possible, though, that it only generates output if connected to a terminal, or that it writes it to some logfile that you don?t currently
know about.)

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

bp@www.zefox.net wrote:

Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

bp@www.zefox.net writes:

Lately I've been having trouble with Bookworm, on both a Pi5
and a Pi2B (32 bit), in which the Raspberry menu is used to
launch applications but seemingly nothing happens. No error
message pops up, it's as if I never even tried. Presumably
something had a fatal error, but where should I look for
the epitaph?

This happens most often with Firefox and Chromium browsers,
but occasionally happens with things like LX Terminal, which
I'd expect to be more robust.

There doesn't seem to be a /var/log/messages, as I'm accustomed
to checking, and ISTR Windows used a dedicated application for
watching system messages. Is there such a beast in Bookworm?

Standard error from applications launched from the desktop historically
(and at least to some extent, still) goes to a file in your home
directory. Watch it with:

tail -f ~/.xsession-errors

Some things log to the user journal:

journalctl --user --follow

Depending on the cause of the problem the kernel log may also be
informative:

journalctl --dmesg --follow

Thank you!!!

After opening windows with all three commands running I tried to
start a program that sometimes fails silently. In this particular
case it didn't fail, starting normally. However, no extra output
was displayed in any of the monitoring windows. Should I have
seen any output from any of these commands during a successful
application start?

FWIW, the command run was from the raspberry>accessories menu,
it's called owon-vds-tiny and it runs control software for a
USB oscilloscope. When run from the command line it emits
a considerable flow of status information to the controlling
terminal.

I'll keep trying in hopes of capturing a failure event. So far
they seem associated with prolonged (days or weeks) of uptime.

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:42:22 +0100, druck wrote:

On 15/07/2026 21:56, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

On Wed, 15 Jul 2026 17:49:13 +0100, druck wrote:

That's the easy stuff, compare journald.conf with logrotate, and
then find that half the vacuum options don't even work correctly.
I have to manually clean out in-memory logs every few weeks so it
doesn't get full, which affects random stuff.

Never had any trouble with the systemd journal. None whatsoever.
Whether on client machines (running Debian Stable), or my own
(running Debian Unstable).

Well bravo, that proves it must be 100% perfect on a sample size of
1.

Sample size of lots more than just 1 machine.

I suspect the problem is with your distro.

No, its the same one the vast majority of people use.

There is no Linux distro that ?the vast majority of people use?.

I've even had a bug report given the usual Peottering response to
the most glaring or errors; "Not a bug - wont fix".

Feel free to link to the bug report, so we can all decide whom to
laugh at.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

bp@www.zefox.net writes:

After opening windows with all three commands running I tried to
start a program that sometimes fails silently. In this particular
case it didn't fail, starting normally. However, no extra output
was displayed in any of the monitoring windows. Should I have
seen any output from any of these commands during a successful
application start?

Not necessarily. Some programs are chatty, but often if there?s nothing
wrong then there?s no output.

FWIW, the command run was from the raspberry>accessories menu,
it's called owon-vds-tiny and it runs control software for a
USB oscilloscope. When run from the command line it emits
a considerable flow of status information to the controlling
terminal.

You would expect that to go _somewhere_ when started from a menu, so if you?re not seeing it at all then there?s certainly a question to answer. (It?s possible, though, that it only generates output if connected to a terminal, or that it writes it to some logfile that you don?t currently
know about.)

For the very first time an error dialog box appeared yesterday. The
formatting looked more like a Windows widget, so I think it
probably came from the application, not the system. It reported an "incompatible magic value nnn...nnn in class file java/util/....".

That suggests whatever is going wrong has nothing to do with RasPiOS,
so maybe I shouldn't expect anything to show up in system error logs.

There's been an ongoing compatibility problem with the application.
When I set up the Pi2 and tried to use the oscilloscop it worked
perfectly. After the first RasPiOS update, it stopped working. Moving
to a Pi5 with a more up-to-date RasPiOS, it never worked. The application always ran without error but could never connect to the 'scope, even
though lsusb reported the 'scope was connected.

On the Pi2 I started with, it gradually emerged that shortly after
boot, the program and 'scope worked fine, but after a few days' uptime
the whole system became unstable. It looked like the window manager
would crash, leaving a black screen, no mouse pointer and sometimes
an unresponsive capslock key. Power cycle was the only way out. This
behavior seems independent of whether the 'scope software is in use.

The oscilloscop and software seem to work well when they work so it's
a bit frustrating. For the time being, I'm baffled.

Thanks for writing!

bob prohaska




--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

bp@www.zefox.net writes:

For the very first time an error dialog box appeared yesterday. The formatting looked more like a Windows widget, so I think it
probably came from the application, not the system. It reported an "incompatible magic value nnn...nnn in class file java/util/....".

Part of a Java library or application is corrupted.

On a Pi, the first guess would be that the SD card is on the way out.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 18/07/2026 15:49, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

bp@www.zefox.net writes:

For the very first time an error dialog box appeared yesterday. The
formatting looked more like a Windows widget, so I think it
probably came from the application, not the system. It reported an
"incompatible magic value nnn...nnn in class file java/util/....".

Part of a Java library or application is corrupted.

On a Pi, the first guess would be that the SD card is on the way out.

Assuming one is actually in use...

--
"It is an established fact to 97% confidence limits that left wing conspirators see right wing conspiracies everywhere"


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

On 18/07/2026 15:49, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

bp@www.zefox.net writes:

For the very first time an error dialog box appeared yesterday. The
formatting looked more like a Windows widget, so I think it
probably came from the application, not the system. It reported an
"incompatible magic value nnn...nnn in class file java/util/....".

Part of a Java library or application is corrupted.

On a Pi, the first guess would be that the SD card is on the way out.

Assuming one is actually in use...

Indeed, an SD card is in use. However, it's relatively big and still
only 17% in-use according to df. It's unlikely the entire card has
been written to even once. It's a Samsung Evo Plus, so a reputable manufacturer. The problem could be the card, but that would be at
least slightly surprising.

I'm actually more disturbed at the consistent failure of the 'scope
control program working on more recent RasPiOS versions. That's almost certainly a software problem and it seems persistent.

There are install scripts for Windows, MacOS and Debian, naturally I've
used the Debian script on RasPiOS. I've looked at the MacOS script
to see if it might be adapable to FreeBSD, with which I'm relatively
familiar. Clearly there are path differences between MacOS and FreeBSD,
which I might be able to adjust. More worrisome is how well the Java
libraries in FreeBSD support the 'scope program's requirements. I'm not
a programmer, so anything more sophisticated than copy-paste fixes are
likely beyond me. I've asked on the developer's GitHub page, no answer
yet.

If anybody's got insights on adapting to FreeBSD please let me know.

Thanks for reading!

bob prohaska


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 19/07/2026 10:17, druck wrote:

On 17/07/2026 02:13, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

On Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:42:22 +0100, druck wrote:

On 15/07/2026 21:56, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

I suspect the problem is with your distro.

No, its the same one the vast majority of people use.

There is no Linux distro that ?the vast majority of people use?.

On a Raspberry Pi group, the majority use Raspberry Pi OS.

Do you even use one, or just come here to shit post?

I think the nail has travelled well into the wood there.

---druck

--
?Progress is precisely that which rules and regulations did not foresee,?

? Ludwig von Mises


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

FWIW, the command run was from the raspberry>accessories menu,
it's called owon-vds-tiny and it runs control software for a
USB oscilloscope. When run from the command line it emits
a considerable flow of status information to the controlling
terminal.

A few ideas on this.

It looks like some others are having issues with modern
versions of libusb and this device (ie: OWON device can't get claimed by libusb started with kernel 6.4.15). This could mean that you need to find an older/unsupported build of Raspbian that may no longer receive updates.

Search the issues section of the github site to see if anyone else is having similar issues: https://github.com/florentbr/OWON-VDS1022/issues

You could also try installing the latest version (or re-walking through the setup steps/reinstalling): http://github.com/florentbr/Owon-VDS1022/

Hope you work it out.

-- Rob

... My reality check just bounced

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/32)
* Origin: ReTR0aKTiV.com (1:3634/56)

On Sun, 19 Jul 2026 10:17:17 +0100, druck wrote:

On 17/07/2026 02:13, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

On Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:42:22 +0100, druck wrote:

On 15/07/2026 21:56, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

I suspect the problem is with your distro.

No, its the same one the vast majority of people use.

There is no Linux distro that ?the vast majority of people use?.

On a Raspberry Pi group, the majority use Raspberry Pi OS.

You didn?t say ?Raspberry Pi users?, you said ?people?.

Do you even use one, or just come here to shit post?

I came here to ask you the same question!

Do you feel you have to use the same distro that the ?majority of
Raspberry Pi users use?? You don?t feel you can try anything else,
that might be better suited to your peculiar needs (or lack of them)?

For example, I understand that there is a version of NetBSD for the Pi
as well. You might be happier commiserating among that group.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)