Changes/Reduce Maximum Journal Size

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Reduce the Maximum Journal Size

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

Summary

Reduce the amount of disk space that the journal can use, by introducing a 3 month retention limit, on top of the existing 4 GB disk space limit.

Owner

• Name: chrismurphy
• Email: <your email address so we can contact you, invite you to meetings, etc. Please provide your Bugzilla email address if it is different from your email in FAS>

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora Linux 38
• Last updated: 2022-12-21
• FESCo issue: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
• Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
• Release notes tracker: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

Currently, the journal can occupy up to 4 GB of disk space. 4 GB is a lot of space to use for logs, and this has been a source of user complaints.

Limiting the journal logs to 3 months retention is primarily intended to reduce the amount of disk space used. The time-based limit also intended to set the journal limit based on the need for the data, as opposed to the more arbitrary disk space criteria.

Feedback

• October 2020: systemd issue - Reduce default journal disk space size limit
• January 2021: thinking journal retention limits mailing list thread
• January 2021: Workstation Working Group issue
• September 2022: Limiting the (systemd) journal size mailing list thread

Benefit to Fedora

• Reduce the amount of disk space used for logs, thus increasing the amount of space available for other things
• Reduce user complaints
• A more privacy-conscious design

Scope

• Proposal owners:
  • Propose the journal limit change upstream in systemd
  • If the change isn't accepted in systemd, implement it as a downstream patch
• Other developers:
  • Other developers aren't expected to be affected
• Release engineering: #Releng issue number
• Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Alignment with Objectives: N/A (not needed for this Change)

How To Test

Post-release it will be useful to validate that the change has had the intended effect of reducing disk usage. This can be checked with sudo journalctl --disk-usage.

User Experience

The main user experience change will be increased disk space availability.

Dependencies

No dependencies.

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) N/A (not a System Wide Change)
  • Proposal owner to revert the code change if necessary.
• Contingency deadline: beta freeze.
• Blocks release? No.

Documentation

man journald.conf