Make systemd debug shell usable again

One way is to also set systemd.show_status as kernel parameter. For example, in total:

systemd.debug-shell=1 systemd.show_status=false

This makes the systemd debug shell usable again.

However, it kills all systemd boot console output, not just obstructing animations. Perhaps there is a better way - say - tell systemd somehow to just print to a certain tty.

The hanging jobs can be displayed via:

# systemctl list-jobs | grep running

If you add the boot option console=tty1, it should keep the systemd output on tty1.

That said, I think systemd.show_status=false is closer to what you asked for.

console=tty1 will also keep kernel messages on tty1.[*] So you could miss useful warnings or error messages. If the kernel crashes completely, it could log very useful information to tty1, but you will not be able to switch back to see it. (To be fair, you can have the same problem once you are using a graphical interface).

---

[*] Linux: Difference between /dev/console , /dev/tty and /dev/tty0