Journal

Reading System Events Without Root Access

You may have noticed that you cannot access system journal events by default. This is intentional, systemd restricts access to protect sensitive information coming from system services, kernel messages, user sessions, and background daemons.

Solution: Add your user to a privileged group

Non-root users can read logs by joining either the systemd-journal or adm group. Choose one:

Option 1: Using systemd-journal group (recommended)

sudo usermod -a -G systemd-journal $USER

Option 2: Using adm group

sudo usermod -a -G adm $USER