When looking at logs in HA (System | Logs) I noticed that there are no logs older than 1 day even though my HA has been running for a few months. I would like to have 30 days of log entries especially for “Nodered” add-on because it is helpful for diagnostics purposes. For the other system stuff (like host, zwave, matter, etc.) then 1 days is likely fine.
I’ve dug around in SSH and I can see the logs using both: ha host logs and journalctl (when logged into 22222 SSH)
Additionally, I can filter logs by identifiers, so I can see the exact same thing that the UI is showing. For example: ha host logs -t addon_a0d7b954_nodered
But, in all cases, I can only see up to a day ago. Even if I try to use date ranges, I don’t see anything older than 1 day: journalctl --since “2026-03-01” --until “2026-03-03”
I know that I can clear logs by running journalctl --vacuum-time=2week if I wanted to clean old entries and I suspect HA is running a background task to automatically clear every day or so.
Can anyone confirm this and tell me if there is a configuration (or YAML) to change the retention policy?
I thought maybe “system_log” integration was responsible for this: System Log - Home Assistant
but it shows a default of 50 for “max_entries” and I certainly have way more that in my log categories. So, I suspect this is legacy from the old file-based logs.
My environment is dedicated HW running HAOS - I have overkill for memory and HDD and CPU.
The /etc/systemd/journald.conf file is as follows:
[Journal]
Storage=auto
Compress=yes
SystemMaxUse=500M
Th /var/log/journal folder looks like this:
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 16.0M Mar 5 16:00 system.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 4 20:25 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003aef368-00064c3ce97a9d3a.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 4 21:14 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003af4933-00064c3da5bd546b.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 4 22:07 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003af9f23-00064c3e54806d77.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 4 23:00 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003aff4a2-00064c3f1203e1eb.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 4 23:54 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b04a31-00064c3fd21951a2.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 00:46 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b09fc0-00064c40902af4a4.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 01:37 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b0f5da-00064c414b14ef14.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 02:29 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b14c3d-00064c4201fad38e.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 03:19 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b1a2b9-00064c42bb684d14.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 04:13 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b1f953-00064c437051aa23.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 05:05 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b24f7a-00064c442eae1328.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 06:00 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b2a507-00064c44ea2a475d.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 06:52 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b2fb07-00064c45ad11f302.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 07:38 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b350e7-00064c466713c08d.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 08:27 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b3a66a-00064c470c22c8db.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 09:17 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b3fc32-00064c47bcb2fd17.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 10:05 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b45245-00064c486e7facda.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 10:54 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b4a85d-00064c49199cf544.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 11:43 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b4fe7d-00064c49cb076918.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 12:35 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b554ef-00064c4a7ad909db.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 13:17 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b5aa89-00064c4b321411a3.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 14:04 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b6003f-00064c4bc890e08a.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 14:27 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b65673-00064c4c715d4443.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 14:47 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b6b228-00064c4cc5847b6a.journal
-rw-r----- 1 root systemd-journal 24.0M Mar 5 15:29 system@03300fb63ae943bf8312c1831f0884c3-0000000003b70edd-00064c4d0a67d3d8.journal
Here is how many entries per homeassistant identifier are in the logs:
533295 homeassistant addon_core_openthread_border_router
16106 homeassistant bluetoothd
11142 homeassistant hassio_dns
3589 homeassistant kernel
2453 homeassistant audit
2444 homeassistant systemd
1315 homeassistant hassio_supervisor
699 homeassistant hassio_audio
561 homeassistant addon_core_zwave_js
540 homeassistant addon_core_matter_server
446 homeassistant addon_a0d7b954_nodered
350 homeassistant addon_a0d7b954_ssh
254 homeassistant containerd
251 homeassistant NetworkManager
129 homeassistant dockerd
91 homeassistant homeassistant
91 homeassistant addon_1f3d020e_hassos_ssh_configurator_addon
81 homeassistant systemd-timesyncd
81 homeassistant addon_builder_1f3d020e_hassos_ssh_configurator_addon
38 homeassistant hassio_multicast
36 homeassistant os-agent
34 homeassistant systemd-resolved
32 homeassistant hassio_cli
24 homeassistant serialx.descriptor_transport
24 homeassistant dropbear
20 homeassistant systemd-tmpfiles
20 homeassistant hassos-expand
18 homeassistant systemd-fsck
16 homeassistant universal_silabs_flasher.spinel
16 homeassistant rauc
12 homeassistant wpa_supplicant
12 homeassistant systemd-journald
10 homeassistant systemd-logind
10 homeassistant serialx.platforms.serial_posix
8 homeassistant zigpy.serial
6 homeassistant hassos-supervisor
6 homeassistant hassos-config
6 homeassistant dbus-broker-launch
6 homeassistant auditd
4 homeassistant udisksd
4 homeassistant systemd-time-wait-sync
4 homeassistant haos-swapfile
4 homeassistant docker
4 homeassistant application
2 homeassistant systemd-udevd
2 homeassistant systemd-growfs
2 homeassistant sm-notify
2 homeassistant raucdb-update
2 homeassistant hassos-persists
2 homeassistant hassio_observer
2 homeassistant dbus-broker
2 homeassistant augenrules
2 homeassistant auditctl
2 homeassistant asyncio
2 homeassistant (uetoothd)
2 homeassistant (rpcbind)