Environment $SYSTEMD_PAGER Pager to use when is not given; overrides $PAGER. If neither $SYSTEMD_PAGER nor $PAGER are set, a set of well-known pager implementations are tried in turn, including less1 and more1, until one is found. If no pager implementation is discovered no pager is invoked. Setting this environment variable to an empty string or the value cat is equivalent to passing . $SYSTEMD_LESS Override the options passed to less (by default FRSXMK). Users might want to change two options in particular: This option instructs the pager to exit immediately when CtrlC is pressed. To allow less to handle CtrlC itself to switch back to the pager command prompt, unset this option. If the value of $SYSTEMD_LESS does not include K, and the pager that is invoked is less, CtrlC will be ignored by the executable, and needs to be handled by the pager. This option instructs the pager to not send termcap initialization and deinitialization strings to the terminal. It is set by default to allow command output to remain visible in the terminal even after the pager exits. Nevertheless, this prevents some pager functionality from working, in particular paged output cannot be scrolled with the mouse. See less1 for more discussion. $SYSTEMD_LESSCHARSET Override the charset passed to less (by default utf-8, if the invoking terminal is determined to be UTF-8 compatible). $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE Takes a boolean argument. When true, the "secure" mode of the pager is enabled; if false, disabled. If $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE is not set at all, secure mode is enabled if the effective UID is not the same as the owner of the login session, see geteuid2 and sd_pid_get_owner_uid3. In secure mode, will be set when invoking the pager, and the pager shall disable commands that open or create new files or start new subprocesses. When $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE is not set at all, pagers which are not known to implement secure mode will not be used. (Currently only less1 implements secure mode.) Note: when commands are invoked with elevated privileges, for example under sudo8 or pkexec1, care must be taken to ensure that unintended interactive features are not enabled. "Secure" mode for the pager may be enabled automatically as describe above. Setting SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE=0 or not removing it from the inherited environment allows the user to invoke arbitrary commands. Note that if the $SYSTEMD_PAGER or $PAGER variables are to be honoured, $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE must be set too. It might be reasonable to completely disable the pager using instead. $SYSTEMD_COLORS The value must be a boolean. Controls whether colorized output should be generated. This can be specified to override the decision that systemd makes based on $TERM and what the console is connected to. $SYSTEMD_URLIFY The value must be a boolean. Controls whether clickable links should be generated in the output for terminal emulators supporting this. This can be specified to override the decision that systemd makes based on $TERM and other conditions.