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
Source: systemd/systemd