2 Methods to Check Disk Space Usage of Journald on Linux

Journald is a system service included with systemd that collects and manages log messages generated by different components of the Linux system. Over time, these logs can accumulate and take up a noticeable amount of disk space. This tutorial provides 2 methods how to check disk space usage of Journald on Linux.

Method 1 - journalctl command

The simplest method is to use the built-in journalctl command, which provides a convenient option to display total log size. Run the following command:

journalctl --disk-usage

You'll get an output similar to:

Archived and active journals take up 56.2M in the file system.

Method 2 - Checking the journal directory directly

Alternatively, you can use the du command to inspect the /var/log/journal directory, which is where Journald stores its log data:

du -sh /var/log/journal

Example output:

57M /var/log/journal