Single log line is 49KB+ (ext4) / 110KB+ (btrfs) of systemd-journald disk writes

Aug 14, 2026 01:41 AM - 1 day ago 1

systemd type the rumor has been seen with

257.9

Used distribution

Debian 13

Linux kernel type used

6.12.57+deb13-amd64

Component

systemd-journald

Expected behaviour you didn't see

Log writes should beryllium wrong bid of magnitude of syslog

Unexpected behaviour you saw

VM doing ~50 IOPS erstwhile penning 2 lines of log per second

Steps to reproduce the problem

this is precisely aforesaid rumor #15292 that was closed without bully reason

Step 1. Use journald successful mode wherever it writes to difficult drive. The FS is XFS

Step 2. person changeless watercourse of log entries going connected a VM

Jan 03 13:37:01 cthylla haproxy[727]: 192.168.1.1:48550 [03/Jan/2026:13:37:01.392] f_www b_icinga/web 0/0/0/6/6 302 153 - - ---- 2/2/0/0/0 0/0 "GET / HTTP/1.0" Jan 03 13:37:03 cthylla haproxy[727]: 192.168.1.1:36892 [03/Jan/2026:13:37:03.403] f_www b_icinga/web 0/0/0/7/7 302 153 - - ---- 2/2/0/0/0 0/0 "GET / HTTP/1.0" Jan 03 13:37:05 cthylla haproxy[727]: 192.168.1.1:36904 [03/Jan/2026:13:37:05.416] f_www b_icinga/web 0/0/0/6/6 302 153 - - ---- 2/2/0/0/0 0/0 "GET / HTTP/1.0" Jan 03 13:37:07 cthylla haproxy[727]: 192.168.1.1:36906 [03/Jan/2026:13:37:07.427] f_www b_icinga/web 0/0/0/6/6 302 153 - - ---- 2/2/0/0/0 0/0 "GET / HTTP/1.0" Jan 03 13:37:09 cthylla haproxy[727]: 192.168.1.1:36912 [03/Jan/2026:13:37:09.439] f_www b_icinga/web 0/0/0/7/8 302 153 - - ---- 2/2/0/0/0 0/0 "GET / HTTP/1.0" Jan 03 13:37:11 cthylla haproxy[727]: 192.168.1.1:36918 [03/Jan/2026:13:37:11.454] f_www b_icinga/web 0/0/0/6/6 302 153 - - ---- 2/2/0/0/0 0/0 "GET / HTTP/1.0" Jan 03 13:37:13 cthylla haproxy[727]: 192.168.1.1:45832 [03/Jan/2026:13:37:13.465] f_www b_icinga/web 0/0/0/7/7 302 153 - - ---- 2/2/0/0/0 0/0 "GET / HTTP/1.0" Jan 03 13:37:15 cthylla haproxy[727]: 192.168.1.1:45848 [03/Jan/2026:13:37:15.476] f_www b_icinga/web 0/0/0/6/6 302 153 - - ---- 2/2/0/0/0 0/0 "GET / HTTP/1.0" Jan 03 13:37:17 cthylla haproxy[727]: 192.168.1.1:45856 [03/Jan/2026:13:37:17.488] f_www b_icinga/web 0/0/0/6/6 302 153 - - ---- 2/2/0/0/0 0/0 "GET / HTTP/1.0" Jan 03 13:37:19 cthylla haproxy[727]: 192.168.1.1:45862 [03/Jan/2026:13:37:19.500] f_www b_icinga/web 0/0/0/6/6 302 153 - - ---- 2/2/0/0/0 0/0 "GET / HTTP/1.0"

Step 3. Observe the VM IO traffic.

I utilized VM arsenic illustration because the title successful #15292 was "iotop is not accurate" (I tin judge that, it's earlier immoderate OS constitute coaelscing) but this intelligibly shows postulation aft each kernel system was used. So no, it isn't "kernel making lotsa iops retired of it", it's slow.

Journald conscionable uses highly inefficient format (also I've seen it corrupt connected unclean reboot capable times to state it's not moreover each that resilient) arsenic files are besides aggregate times the size of what's really written successful them.