I use Fedora and these directories contains a large amount of files, I wonder whether I can delete them? The system is running low on space.
3 Answers
journal logs
Yes you can delete everything inside of /var/log/journal/*
but do not delete the directory itself. You can also query journalctl
to find out how much disk space it's consuming:
$ journalctl --disk-usage
Journals take up 3.8G on disk.
You can control the size of this directory using this parameter in your /etc/systemd/journald.conf
:
SystemMaxUse=50M
You can force a log rotation:
$ sudo systemctl kill --kill-who=main --signal=SIGUSR2 systemd-journald.service
NOTE: You might need to restart the logging service to force a log rotation, if the above signaling method does not do it. You can restart the service like so:
$ sudo systemctl restart systemd-journald.service
abrt logs
These files too under /var/cache/abrt-di/*
can be deleted as well. The size of the log files here is controlled under:
$ grep -i size /etc/abrt/abrt.conf
# Max size for crash storage [MiB] or 0 for unlimited
MaxCrashReportsSize = 1000
You can control the max size of /var/cache/abrt-di
by changing the following in file, /etc/abrt/plugins/CCpp.conf
:
DebugInfoCacheMB = 2000
NOTE: If not defined DebugInfoCacheMB
defaults to 4000 (4GB).
References

- 369,824
Yes, the files from /var/log/journal
directory can be removed.
The nicest method I've found is:
sudo journalctl --vacuum-size=500M
which deletes old log-files from /var/log/journal
until total size of the directory becomes under specified threshold (500 megabytes in this example).
-
4safe, fast, smooth and clean, thanks! also, as mentioned in https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/130802/142247 there is a permanent solution for this in /etc/systemd/journald.conf -> SystemMaxUse=500M – crysman Apr 05 '20 at 10:48
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12Make it permanent with:
echo SystemMaxUse=500M | sudo tee -a /etc/systemd/journald.conf
– Rael Gugelmin Cunha Jul 16 '20 at 13:58 -
3I had to use
sudo
otherwise it clears 0 bytessudo journalctl --vacuum-size=500M
– Nickson Yap Oct 20 '20 at 04:36 -
3What is the use of keeping it so large by default? Do we lose anything by trimming to 500MB? Will we lose the ability to recover data in the event of crash if we keep it low? – Jus12 Mar 16 '21 at 07:18
You can also clean based on time:
journalctl --vacuum-time=10d
# du -sh /var/log/journal
113M /var/log/journal
# journalctl --vacuum-time=10d
Deleted archived journal /var/log/journal/f77f9567bb70f8e7b5d9a0c95bef5c2a/system@36170b4530af4c89ac4d84ac68f8b727-0000000000000001-00057b09da23eb2c.journal (8.0M).
Deleted archived journal /var/log/journal/f77f9567bb70f8e7b5d9a0c95bef5c2a/user-1000@54176301a0c74c4698c3b6a549e1b2ed-0000000000000874-00057b0c1a491094.journal (8.0M).
. . .
Deleted archived journal /var/log/journal/f77f9567bb70f8e7b5d9a0c95bef5c2a/user-1000@e6ecd2f858d1498b9a445af7bac00bbf-000000000000063a-0005848ac99802b3.journal (8.0M).
Vacuuming done, freed 88.0M of archived journals from /var/log/journal/f77f9567bb70f8e7b5d9a0c95bef5c2a.
root@monroe:/var/log# du -sh /var/log/journal
25M /var/log/journal

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3that command worked. ncdu revealed that journal logs were taking lots of space. i just cleared about 3.8GB of space on my ssd. really needed some free space. – Silver Moon Apr 25 '21 at 15:53
systemctl restart systemd-journald.service
forced the rotate and not signaling the process – Michael Ben-Nes May 09 '15 at 08:24MaxRetentionSec
instead ofSystemMaxUse
. Seeman journald.conf
for more details. – joelostblom Mar 29 '18 at 13:08SystemMaxUse=1024MB
appears in/etc/systemd/journald.conf
and is un-commented, butjournalctl --disk-usage
reportsArchived and active journals take up 4.0G on disk.
Am I missing something? – Ben Johnson Feb 11 '20 at 02:5550M
be enough for journal? – alper Apr 09 '23 at 12:39SystemMaxUse
I set. (Previously it was unset, and there were 3.9GB of logs—essentially in line with the default cap.) – Jonathan W. Nov 12 '23 at 20:41