Enable persistent storage for the systemd journal log
Overview
The assumed default setting in /etc/systemd/journald.conf is Storage=auto which implies that systemd journaling will only persist the journal if the expected storage location is available. Otherwise, the journal data is stored in memory and lost between reboots.
/var/log/journal does not exist by default. Create it to keep and query events from previous boots.
Considerations:
Syslog still provides the persistant log records, so enabling persistant systemd journal logging does cause a level of duplicaiton.
There are sane defaults:
SystemMaxUse is 10% for peristant storage in /var/log/journal, or 15% for memory use in /run/log/journal
SystemMaxFiles=100
SystemMaxFileSize = SystemMaxUse/8
More config options such as MaxLevelStore can help control how fast storage is consumed.
Create storage and enable storage location
mkdir -p /var/log/journal
systemd-tmpfiles --create --prefix /var/log/journal
systemctl restart systemd-journald