@dino99. Because good defaults matter. Being safe by default is important. Being secure by default is important.
The "Principle of least surprise" applies here: "In general engineering design contexts, the principle can be taken to mean that a component of a system should behave in a manner consistent with how users of that component are likely to expect it to behave". One reasonable expects their logs to saved through reboot, as system logs have worked that way for the last couple of decades. I didn't think to go create "/var/log/journal" because I trusted Ubuntu to continue to be "safe by default" has it generally has been for years. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to systemd in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1618188 Title: systemd journal should be persistent by default: /var/log/journal should be created; remove rsyslog from default installs Status in systemd package in Ubuntu: Triaged Status in ubuntu-meta package in Ubuntu: Triaged 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. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/+bug/1618188/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
