Bug 90268

Summary:	(tmpfiles,journald) systemd 219 + linux 4.0.x = journal failing to append on boot
Product:	systemd	Reporter:	brent s. <brent.saner>
Component:	general	Assignee:	systemd-bugs
Status:	RESOLVED WORKSFORME	QA Contact:	systemd-bugs
Severity:	critical
Priority:	high	CC:	brent.saner
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	x86-64 (AMD64)
OS:	Linux (All)
URL:	https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/44799
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:

Description brent s. 2015-05-01 14:30:51 UTC

in some cases (i can't seem to narrow down which yet), systemd fails to create /run/log/journal. This then causes further failure of journald to fail to both:

-append to the volatile journal
-append to the persistent journal (if one exists)- no flushes, as the volatile journal is not appended

from what i understand, the volatile journal does not exist because it normally is written to /run/log/journal. on boot, the entries of /run/log/journal are copied over to the persistent journal in /var/log/journal/ (if persistence is enabled) (is this correct?).

this is occurring on fully updated/patched Arch Linux, x86_64.
this behaviour does not exist on kernel 3.19.3.

of three machines with systemd, i note the following:

machineA (desktop): does not create /run/log/journal; no new journal entries are created.

machineB (laptop): does not create /run/log/journal; HOWEVER, new journal entries SEEM to be appended/created.

machineC (firewall box): /run/log/journal IS created; new journal entries are added.

machineA and machineB share the exact same /etc/systemd/journald.conf (with no syslog):
[bts@workhorse systemd]$ egrep -Ev '^[[:space:]]*(#|$)' journald.conf 
[Journal]
Storage=persistent
Compress=yes
SystemMaxUse=100M
SystemMaxFileSize=20M


machineC, however, uses no persistence and uses a purely volatile journal (with syslog):
[root@comptroller systemd]# egrep -Ev '^[[:space:]]*(#|$)' journald.conf 
[Journal]
Storage=volatile
Seal=no
SystemMaxUse=50M
RuntimeMaxUse=50M
ForwardToSyslog=yes


as a temporary workaround, it seems that "systemctl restart systemd-journald" on the affected machine (machineA) seems to allow new journal entries. however, /run/log/journal is still not created during the restart.


let me know what logs/output/etc. you wish to see.


(cross-linking for reference: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/44799 )

Comment 1 brent s. 2015-05-20 20:34:58 UTC

this issue continues to persist on linux 4.0.4.

Comment 2 brent s. 2015-05-20 20:36:07 UTC

increasing severity/importance due to this being a huge failure- i have no way of getting logging running reliably on this box and there has been no response.

Comment 3 brent s. 2015-05-28 05:47:37 UTC

as an update, this appears to occur under the following conditions:

-/var is mounted as a bindmount,
-on another disk from /

not sure which is the cause. my guess is the first, but i do this to avoid unnecessary writes to the SSD (which / resides on).

please fix.

Comment 4 raoul 2016-12-17 10:40:43 UTC

I have the same exact problem (with /var/log mounted as tmpfs to avoid unnecessary writes to the SSD disk). Apparently this issue has never been fixed.

Comment 5 Lennart Poettering 2017-10-27 18:04:27 UTC

The relevant code has been reworked substantially in more current systemd version. If this continues to be a problem with 235, please open a new issue on github, and let's continue the discussion there. Thank you.

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