This is not an SRU-appropriate change and should not have been accepted
into artful. Please revert this ASAP for artful. Marking 'wontfix' for
xenial.
** Changed in: systemd (Ubuntu Xenial)
Status: In Progress => Won't Fix
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1618188
Title:
systemd journal should be persistent by default: /var/log/journal
should be created
Status in systemd package in Ubuntu:
Fix Released
Status in systemd source package in Xenial:
Won't Fix
Status in systemd source package in Zesty:
Won't Fix
Status in systemd source package in Artful:
Fix Released
Status in systemd source package in Bionic:
Fix Released
Bug description:
[Impact]
* System logs are lost across reboots because they are not stored
persistently.
[Test Case]
* Fresh installations, or upgrades to this version of systemd, should create
/var/log/journal and trigger automatic persistent logs.
* Users may choose to remove said directory, or disable persistent logging
in /etc/systemd/journald.conf
[Regression Potential]
* Persistent logging by default will cause logs to be flushed from
/run to /var/log, meaning there will be less RAM used (/run is tmpfs
backed), but increased disk usage (in /var/log). The journald daemon
has limits set for logs, meaning they will be rotated and discarded
and should not cause out of disk-space errors.
[Other Info]
* Original bug report
After upgrading 14.04 -> 16.04, key services are now running on
systemd and using the systemd journal for logging. In 14.04, key
system logs like /var/log/messages and /var/log/syslog were
persistent, but after the upgrade to 16.04 there has a been a
regression of sorts: Logs sent to systemd's journald are now being
thrown away during reboots.
This behavior is controlled by the `Storage=` option in
`/etc/systemd/journald.conf`. The default setting is `Storage=auto`
which will persist logs in `/var/log/journal/`, *only if the directory
already exists*. But the directory was not created as part of the
14.04 -> 16.04 upgrade, so logging was being lost for a while before I
realized what was happening.
This issue could be solved by either creating /var/log/journal or
changing the default Storage behavior to `Storage=persistent`, which
would create the directory if need be.
## Related reference
* `systemd` currently compounds the issue by having ["journal --disk-usage"
report memory usage as disk
usage](https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4059), giving the impression
that the disk is being used for logging when it isn't.
* [User wonders where to find logs from previous boots, unaware that the
logs were thrown
away](http://askubuntu.com/questions/765315/how-to-find-previous-boot-log-after-ubuntu-16-04-restarts)
## Recommended fix
Restoring persistent logging as the default is recommended.
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