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docs: add systemd journal example to Promtail migration guide#6108

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ferr079:docs/promtail-journal-migration-example
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docs: add systemd journal example to Promtail migration guide#6108
ferr079 wants to merge 1 commit intografana:mainfrom
ferr079:docs/promtail-journal-migration-example

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@ferr079 ferr079 commented Apr 22, 2026

What this PR does

Adds a new example section to the Migrate from Promtail guide showing how to convert a systemd journal scrape configuration, which is one of the most common Promtail patterns on Linux hosts but isn't currently covered in the migration examples.

Why

The current guide only demonstrates converting static_configs + file-based scraping. For anyone running Promtail on bare Linux (VMs, LXC containers, physical servers), the primary use case is scraping systemd-journald — and nothing in the guide shows that mapping. New users have to piece the conversion together from loki.source.journal + loki.relabel reference pages without a concrete before/after example.

This PR adds a third example block (after the existing file-match example, before ## Limitations) with:

  • A typical Promtail scrape_configs: journal: YAML
  • The equivalent Alloy configuration using loki.source.journal and loki.relabel
  • A note about the adm / systemd-journal group membership (already present on loki.source.journal.md but easy to miss during migration)

Context

Real-world source: I migrated ~50 systemd-based hosts from Promtail to Alloy in a homelab and went through this exact translation. The Alloy convert tool handles it but the doc gap makes the output harder to reason about for people doing the conversion by hand to understand what they're shipping.

Checklist

  • Follows the existing "Example" section format in from-promtail.md
  • Uses the same component references and admonition style as loki.source.journal.md
  • Signed-off-by line included (DCO)

The migration guide only covers file-based scrape configs. Systemd
journal scraping is a very common Promtail pattern on Linux hosts
and the conversion to loki.source.journal + loki.relabel wasn't
documented.

Signed-off-by: Stephane <stephane@pixelium.win>
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cla-assistant Bot commented Apr 22, 2026

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cla-assistant Bot commented Apr 22, 2026

CLA assistant check
Thank you for your submission! We really appreciate it. Like many open source projects, we ask that you sign our Contributor License Agreement before we can accept your contribution.
You have signed the CLA already but the status is still pending? Let us recheck it.

ferr079 added a commit to ferr079/pixelium-site that referenced this pull request Apr 23, 2026
… README refresh

Ground truth via GitHub API: Stéphane shipped 4 contributions on 2026-04-22,
all currently 'open' / awaiting review (none merged yet). Previous /contributions
page only listed 1 and claimed 'merged' — both wrong.

Changes:
- /contributions (EN+FR): now lists the 4 real contributions
  · ublue-os/homebrew-experimental-tap#309 (PR, claude-code-linux cask) — first of the day
  · requarks/wiki#7986 (discussion, render IS NULL bug report)
  · grafana/alloy#6108 (PR, Promtail docs migration guide)
  · wazuh/wazuh-documentation#9512 (PR, warn about wazuh-agent postinst)
- Status field: 'merged' → 'open' (honest; none merged upstream yet)
- 'merged' date field → 'shipped' field semantically (day submitted)
- /making-of/v3: 'first OSS PR accepted' → 'four OSS contributions shipped in one day'
- Homepage OSS brick (EN+FR): contextualized PR #309 as 'first of four that day'
- README.md: full refresh — 55 services (was 36), 4 PVE (was 3), 13 pages (was 8),
  SessionImprint, TopologyMap, DynNum, data pipelines documented

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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