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

[Khurshid Alam]

What??!!! Persistent logging does lot more that just logging. Do you
people even use sata hard disk? There are multiple reports (check
archlinux forums) that it is bad for sata. That is why it is set to auto
by default. The word "auto" exactly created for that purpose....when
there is both benefit ane cost with certain action. We don't want our
hard disk to die quickly becquse of we want to see some logs that we
don't understand any way,

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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:
  Confirmed
Status in systemd source package in Zesty:
  Confirmed
Status in systemd source package in Artful:
  Confirmed
Status in systemd source package in Bionic:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  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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