[systemd-devel] Automatic journal check?

[Nikolaus Rath]

Hello,

My journal gets corrupted on pretty much a daily basis. I typically
notice this because things like "systemctl -n 3" take ages to run. When
I then run "journalctl --verify", I get output like this:

Invalid data object at hash entry 3944 of 233016░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░  49%
File corruption detected at /var/log/journal/b865c77cc176b5ef3b69390a0000000d/user-1000 at 0005065350521a47-17e420d2d51ab126.journal~:000000 (of 8388608 bytes, 0%).
Data object references invalid entry at 5182040███░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░  75%
File corruption detected at /var/log/journal/b865c77cc176b5ef3b69390a0000000d/system at 00050713408c0d34-e40e6aa5c35eb139.journal~:000000 (of 8388608 bytes, 0%).
FAIL: /var/log/journal/b865c77cc176b5ef3b69390a0000000d/system at 00050713408c0d34-e40e6aa5c35eb139.journal~ (Bad message)
Data number mismatch██████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░  39%
File corruption detected at /var/log/journal/b865c77cc176b5ef3b69390a0000000d/system at 000507165d32850c-5b4cd09ceb6b2ea6.journal~:000000 (of 16777216 bytes, 0%).
Invalid tail monotonic timestamp░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░  48%
File corruption detected at /var/log/journal/b865c77cc176b5ef3b69390a0000000d/user-65534 at 763da377eefc4369ad61af34c4a5a1c6-00000000000263f0-000504a444037da7.journal:000000 (of 8388608 bytes, 0%).


This corruption is probably caused by me hard-rebooting the computer
recently to debug some other issues.

However, I think it's quite unfortunate that journald isn't able to
recover from this on its own.

Is there a reason why the journal doesn't have a "clean" flag like
regular file systems? This would allow an automatic --verify run when
the journal has not been closed properly, and would save people like me
the trouble of monitoring this manually.


Best,
-Nikolaus

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