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  • On Debian Jessie, the path is /run/log. Commented Feb 12, 2018 at 18:23
  • 4
    This is the currently correct answer. It would be nice if the journalctl command could do this but it appears unable. Commented Sep 26, 2019 at 10:43
  • Some programs do not handle their logs properly and this may break them Commented Dec 26, 2019 at 13:42
  • 1
    This seems to be the only working command from all the answers here, at least for Ubuntu 18.04. 3 GB of /var/log/journal/* from about 3 years were removed by none of the "vacuum" variants mentioned in other answerd Commented Mar 15, 2021 at 16:00
  • On Arch, the vacuum options cleared some intermediary stuff, but the log was always full of stuff from months ago sans the recent stuff. This is the only answer that truly cleared journalctl out Commented Mar 30, 2023 at 14:44