Add filters for journalctl and fs_cli (systemd/FreeSWITCH dev workflows)
#2,259 opened on Jun 4, 2026
Description
Summary
Requesting RTK filter support for two commands that show up heavily in systemd-service and FreeSWITCH development workflows but currently pass through unfiltered: journalctl and fs_cli.
From rtk discover on a real project (34 sessions, 2880 Bash commands), these were among the top unhandled commands:
journalctl— 32 invocations (e.g.journalctl -u portal-backend -u portal-frontend)fs_cli— 29 invocations (e.g.sudo /usr/local/freeswitch/bin/fs_cli -x "sofia status")
Both produce verbose output that is a strong fit for RTK-style compression.
journalctl
Why it's noisy: Default output repeats the full timestamp, hostname, unit, and PID on every line; multi-unit tails (-u a -u b) interleave and balloon fast.
Suggested filter behavior:
- Strip the redundant per-line hostname and leading year/timezone from timestamps (keep
MMM DD HH:MM:SS). - Collapse repeated identical log lines into a single line with an
(xN)count. - Respect
-n/--lines,-u,-p/--priority,--since, and-o json(pass JSON through untouched). - Preserve full content under
-x/ when a single line is an error or stacktrace.
fs_cli
Why it's noisy: FreeSWITCH -x command output (e.g. sofia status, show channels, show registrations) is wide ASCII tables with separator rows and trailing row-count footers.
Suggested filter behavior:
- Drop decorative separator rows (
====,----,+---+). - Compress
show channels/show registrationstables, keeping headers + data rows, dropping the redundantN total.footer when row count is derivable. - Handle the common invocation shapes:
fs_cli -x "<cmd>"and absolute-path binaries like/usr/local/freeswitch/bin/fs_cli. - Pass through cleanly when output is already small (single OK/error line).
Environment
- rtk 0.42.1, Linux x86_64 (musl build)
- Both commands frequently invoked via
sudoand with absolute paths — matcher should handle asudoprefix and full binary paths.