[Bug 1618188] Re: systemd journal should be persistent by default: /var/log/journal should be created

[Brian Murray]

Hello Mark, or anyone else affected,

Accepted systemd into artful-proposed. The package will build now and be
available at
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/234-2ubuntu12.3 in a few
hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package.  See
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how
to enable and use -proposed.Your feedback will aid us getting this
update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug,
mentioning the version of the package you tested and change the tag from
verification-needed-artful to verification-done-artful. If it does not
fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the
tag to verification-failed-artful. In either case, without details of
your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification .  Thank you in
advance!

** Changed in: systemd (Ubuntu Artful)
       Status: In Progress => Fix Committed

** Tags added: verification-needed verification-needed-artful

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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:
  In Progress
Status in systemd source package in Zesty:
  Won't Fix
Status in systemd source package in Artful:
  Fix Committed
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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