audit logs quite hard to see with standard VT colors
Nobody has claimed this yet.
- Dominant language
- C
- Stars
- 16.7k
- Forks
- 4.7k
- Avg merge
- 1d 6h
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 140
Description
Since https://github.com/systemd/systemd/commit/194da5ca5159597e4fac726db5cee104ec338213 (thanks to Kazuo Morikawa for finding the commit), systemd colors audit logs in 'ANSI blue' by default. On a VT on a stock Fedora install - which I think will be the same on other distros and *nixes - this is quite hard to read, as the blue used for 'ANSI blue' is a pretty dark one, and the background color is black.
On Fedora with GNOME Terminal the default color palette is 'Tango' with color scheme 'Tango Dark' and with this combo a medium-light blue is used on a dark grey background, so that's quite readable. I don't know about other terminal apps. But it's definitely pretty bad on VTs.
It's difficult to pick colors that work for everyone all the time, but being hard to read on a VT seems bad :/
Here's a photo of my screen. If anything, the photo brightens things a tad and makes it look slightly easier to read than it is in person.

Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by reviewing commit 194da5ca5159597e4fac726db5cee104ec338213 and reproducing the audit-log colors on a stock Fedora virtual terminal and in GNOME Terminal. Compare the default palette behavior and determine a color choice that keeps audit logs readable across the reported terminal environments.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- c, linux
- Domain
- cli, operating-systems
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100