systemd-journald, A Journal That Survives The Reboot

systemd-journald on EL 10: a drop-in that moves the journal to persistent storage, seals it, and puts a ceiling on the disk it may take. The live test reads the EFFECTIVE settings back out of systemd rather than the file it wrote, finds a real journal file on disk, round-trips a message through it, and runs a vacuum. Original role, live-tested on Rocky Linux 10.

ansibleObservability

Verification

Live-tested

Really deployed to a container sandbox, proven idempotent (a second run changes nothing), verified against the role’s assertions, then torn down.

Conformance

  • Static validation (yamllint · ansible-lint)

Provenance

  • SHA-256 checksum
  • Signature (pending)

Functional

  • Live-tested - applied, verified, destroyed

Last verified 2026-09-26 · podman 4.9.3 · ansible 2.21.4 · how we verify

Cite it in your README

badge · attribution

Paste this beside the module in the repository that uses it. The badge is rendered from this artifact's verification record, so it reads live-tested because the record says so, and the link lands on this page.

README.md, GitLab, Gitea
[![IaC Bazaar: live-tested](https://www.iac-bazaar.com/api/artifacts/ansible-journald-retention/badge)](https://www.iac-bazaar.com/catalog/ansible-journald-retention?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=readme&utm_campaign=artifact)

Ansible role 1.0.0, live-tested on IaC Bazaar: [systemd-journald, A Journal That Survives The Reboot](https://www.iac-bazaar.com/catalog/ansible-journald-retention?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=readme&utm_campaign=artifact)

```yaml
# systemd-journald, A Journal That Survives The Reboot: https://www.iac-bazaar.com/catalog/ansible-journald-retention (download from your IaC Bazaar account)
```

Preview:IaC Bazaar: live-tested

Documentation

journald-retention

A journal that survives the reboot somebody is trying to explain. The role writes one drop-in under /etc/systemd/journald.conf.d, moves the journal to persistent storage, seals it, and puts a ceiling on how much disk it may take. The live test reads the EFFECTIVE settings back out of systemd and then finds the journal file on disk.

Nothing to install and no version to pin. journald is systemd, which is already there. What the role owns is the policy: where the journal lives, how much disk it may take, how far back it keeps, and whether it is sealed.

EL 10 ships no /etc/systemd/journald.conf at all. The defaults are compiled in, so a drop-in is the whole configuration and there is nothing of the distribution's to preserve or fight.

Nothing validates journald.conf. A key journald does not recognise is ignored with a line in its own log, and the daemon starts perfectly well with a policy that does nothing. That is why the verify asks systemd-analyze cat-config systemd/journald.conf for the settings in FORCE rather than reading back the file it just wrote.

SystemKeepFree wins over SystemMaxUse. On a small disk the journal yields rather than filling it, which means a large SystemMaxUse is a ceiling and not a promise.

License

Commercial - IaC Bazaar EULA. (c) IaC Bazaar.

Usage code & full reference need an account

The complete copy-paste usage, the full input/output reference, and operational notes are free with an account - shown here and bundled in the download. Sign in and this section fills in.

  • Variables
  • Test

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