[systemd-devel] Question regarding configuration of SystemMaxUse and SystemKeepFree

[Andrei Borzenkov]

On 02.09.2023 00:29, PureLinux Betriebsführung wrote:
> Hi,
> i am running a bunch of partly very different systems with Debian
> Bookworm. On this machines, i am using systemd 252 (252.12-1~deb12u1).
> 
> If i am configuring journald, i am facing the problem, that /var/log is
> having a very different size on all my machines. From 100M to 8G or
> something.
> 

Documentation states that te default limit is capped at 4G. If you 
really have 8G of journal files, you probably need to investigate why.

> Journald states, that the configuration options SystemMaxUse and
> SystemKeepFree cannot be a relative, percentual value. But they are
> percentual values by default.
> 
> If i want to set a percentual value, journald only returns
> "/etc/systemd/journald.conf:25: Failed to parse size value, ignoring: 20%"
> 
> So my question is - is there any option to set a relative value/a
> percentage for that values? 

Pragmatic answer - service that creates drop-in for journald.conf. It 
can run every time and drop into /run or just once and drop into /etc.

> Per default, it seems to be possible. So why
> not a user defined percentage?
>