[Bug 1618188] [NEW] systemd journal should be persistent by default: /var/log/journal should be created; remove rsyslog from default installs

Launchpad Bug Tracker 1618188 at bugs.launchpad.net
Mon Feb 13 17:14:57 UTC 2017


You have been subscribed to a public bug by Bryan Quigley (bryanquigley):

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.

** Affects: systemd (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Wishlist
         Status: Triaged

** Affects: ubuntu-meta (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Wishlist
         Status: Triaged

-- 
systemd journal should be persistent by default: /var/log/journal should be created; remove rsyslog from default installs
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1618188
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