image_exists ran `podman image inspect <image>` via .status() (inherits the
service stdout) with no --format, so every hit dumped the image's full ~249-line
manifest JSON into the journal — once per companion image, every reconcile pass
(.228: 21.6k journal lines / 10 min, 4131 inspect dumps). The service never
crashed (NRestarts=0); the sustained journald/IO flood starved the async runtime
and dropped the UI /ws/db websocket -> constant "connection lost"/reconnect.
Discard the child's stdout/stderr; only the exit status is used.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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