diff --git a/roles/export-devstack-journal/tasks/main.yaml b/roles/export-devstack-journal/tasks/main.yaml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9af02a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/roles/export-devstack-journal/tasks/main.yaml
@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+# TODO: convert this to ansible
+- name: Export journal files
+  become: true
+  shell:
+    cmd: |
+      u=""
+      name=""
+      for u in `systemctl list-unit-files | grep devstack | awk '{print $1}'`; do
+        name=$(echo $u | sed 's/devstack@/screen-/' | sed 's/\.service//')
+        journalctl -o short-precise --unit $u | tee {{ devstack_base_dir }}/logs/$name.txt > /dev/null
+      done
+
+      # Export the journal in export format to make it downloadable
+      # for later searching. It can then be rewritten to a journal native
+      # format locally using systemd-journal-remote. This makes a class of
+      # debugging much easier. We don't do the native conversion here as
+      # some distros do not package that tooling.
+      journalctl -u 'devstack@*' -o export | \
+          xz --threads=0 - > {{ devstack_base_dir }}/logs/devstack.journal.xz
+
+      # The journal contains everything running under systemd, we'll
+      # build an old school version of the syslog with just the
+      # kernel and sudo messages.
+      journalctl \
+          -t kernel \
+          -t sudo \
+          --no-pager \
+          --since="$(cat {{ devstack_base_dir }}/log-start-timestamp.txt)" \
+        | tee {{ devstack_base_dir }}/logs/syslog.txt > /dev/null