#39472·systemd

Access to nspawn journal no longer works

Author: JookiaCreated Oct 28, 2025Updated Sep 15, 2026
Labelsbug 🐛nspawnregression ⚠️

systemd version the issue has been seen with

258.1-1

Used distribution

Arch Linux

Linux kernel version used

6.17.5-arch1-1

CPU architectures issue was seen on

x86_64

Component

systemd-nspawn

Expected behaviour you didn't see

You should be able to see nspawn containers from the host like this link:

/var/log/journal/b09525e2811f46958ba6adea13140842: symbolic link to /var/lib/machines/mail/var/log/journal/b09525e2811f46958ba6adea13140842

Unexpected behaviour you saw

Instead the symbolic link is broken:

/var/log/journal/b09525e2811f46958ba6adea13140842: broken symbolic link to /tmp/nspawn-root-96f233//var/lib/machines/mail/var/log/journal/b09525e2811f46958ba6adea13140842

Additionally, /tmp/nspawn-root-96f233 is entirely empty.

Steps to reproduce the problem

Upgrade to v258 and run a container like this:

systemd-nspawn --quiet --keep-unit --boot --link-journal=try-guest --network-veth -U --settings=override --machine=mail

Possibly caused by 88252ca8893 ?

Additional program output to the terminal or log subsystem illustrating the issue

bash