auditd.conf - phpMan

AUDITD.CONF:(8) System Administration Utilities AUDITD.CONF:(8)

NAME
auditd.conf - audit daemon configuration file

DESCRIPTION
The file /etc/auditd.conf contains configuration information specific to the audit
daemon. It should contain one configuration keyword per line, an equal sign, and
then followed by appropriate configuration information. The keywords recognized
are: log_file, log_format, flush, freq, num_logs, max_log_file,
max_log_file_action, space_left, action_mail_acct, space_left_action,
admin_space_left, admin_space_left_action, disk_full_action, and disk_error_action.
These keywords are described below.

log_file
This keyword specifies the full path name to the log file where audit
records will be stored. It must be a regular file.

log_format
The only valid value at the moment is RAW. If set to RAW , the audit
records will be stored in a format exactly as the kernel sends it.

priority_boost
This is a non-negative number that tells the audit damon how much of a pri-
ority boost it should take. The default is 3. No change is 0.

flush Valid values are none, incremental, data, and sync. If set to none, no
special effort is made to flush the audit records to disk. If set to incre-
mental, Then the freq parameter is used to determine how often an explicit
flush to disk is issued. The data parameter tells the audit damon to keep
the data portion of the disk file sync’d at all times. The sync option tells
the audit daemon to keep both the data and meta-data fully sync’d with every
write to disk.

freq This is a non-negative number that tells the audit damon how many records to
write before issuing an explicit flush to disk command. this value is only
valid when the flush keyword is set to incremental.

num_logs
This keyword specifies the number of log files to keep if rotate is given as
the max_log_file_action. If the number is < 2, logs are not rotated. This
number must be 99 or less. The default is 0 - which means no rotation. As
you increase the number of log files being rotated, you may need to adjust
the kernel backlog setting upwards since it takes more time to rotate the
files. This is typically done in /etc/audit.rules.

max_log_file
This keyword specifies the maximum file size in megabytes. When this limit
is reached, it will trigger a configurable action. The value given must be
numeric.

max_log_file_action
This parameter tells the system what action to take when the system has
detected that the max file size limit has been reached. Valid values are
ignore, syslog, suspend, rotate and keep_logs. If set to ignore, the audit
daemon does nothing. syslog means that it will issue a warning to syslog.
suspend will cause the audit daemon to stop writing records to the disk. The
daemon will still be alive. The rotate option will cause the audit daemon to
rotate the logs. It should be noted that logs with higher numbers are older
than logs with lower numbers. This is the same convention used by the logro-
tate utility. The keep_logs option is similar to rotate except it does not
use the num_logs setting. This prevents audit logs from being overwritten.

action_mail_acct
This option should contain a valid email address or alias. The default
address is root. If the email address is not local to the machine, you must
make sure you have email properly configured on your machine and network.
Also, this option requires that /usr/lib/sendmail exists on the machine.

space_left
This is a numeric value in megabytes that tells the audit daemon when to
perform a configurable action because the system is starting to run low on
disk space.

space_left_action
This parameter tells the system what action to take when the system has
detected that it is starting to get low on disk space. Valid values are
ignore, syslog, email, suspend, single, and halt. If set to ignore, the
audit daemon does nothing. syslog means that it will issue a warning to
syslog. Email means that it will send a warning to the email account speci-
fied in action_mail_acct as well as sending the message to syslog. suspend
will cause the audit daemon to stop writing records to the disk. The daemon
will still be alive. The single option will cause the audit daemon to put
the computer system in single user mode. halt option will cause the audit
daemon to shutdown the computer system.

admin_space_left
This is a numeric value in megabytes that tells the audit daemon when to
perform a configurable action because the system is running low on disk
space. This should be considered the last chance to do something before run-
ning out of disk space. The numeric value for this parameter should be lower
than the number for space_left.

admin_space_left_action
This parameter tells the system what action to take when the system has
detected that it is low on disk space. Valid values are ignore, syslog,
email, suspend, single, and halt. If set to ignore, the audit daemon does
nothing. Syslog means that it will issue a warning to syslog. Email means
that it will send a warning to the email account specified in
action_mail_acct as well as sending the message to syslog. Suspend will
cause the audit daemon to stop writing records to the disk. The daemon will
still be alive. The single option will cause the audit daemon to put the
computer system in single user mode. halt

disk_full_action
This parameter tells the system what action to take when the system has
detected that the partition to which log files are written has become full.
Valid values are ignore, syslog, suspend, single, and halt. If set to
ignore, the audit daemon does nothing. Syslog means that it will issue a
warning to syslog. Suspend will cause the audit daemon to stop writing
records to the disk. The daemon will still be alive. The single option will
cause the audit daemon to put the computer system in single user mode. halt
option will cause the audit daemon to shutdown the computer system.

disk_error_action
This parameter tells the system what action to take whenever there is an
error detected when writing audit events to disk or rotating logs. Valid
values are ignore, syslog, suspend, single, and halt. If set to ignore, the
audit daemon does nothing. Syslog means that it will issue a warning to
syslog. Suspend will cause the audit daemon to stop writing records to the
disk. The daemon will still be alive. The single option will cause the audit
daemon to put the computer system in single user mode. halt option will
cause the audit daemon to shutdown the computer system.

NOTES
In a CAPP environment, the audit trail is considered so important that access to
system resources must be denied if an audit trail cannot be created. In this envi-
ronment, it would be suggested that /var/loag/audit be on its own partition. This
is to ensure that space detection is accurate and that no other process comes along
and consumes part of it.

The flush parameter should be set to sync or data.

Max_log_file and num_logs need to be adjusted so that you get complete use of your
partition. It should be noted that the more files that have to be rotated, the
longer it takes to get back to receiving audit events. Max_log_file_action should
be set to keep_logs.

Space_left should be set to a number that gives the admin enough time to react to
any alert message and perform some maintenance to free up disk space. This would
typically involve running the aureport -t report and moving the oldest logs to an
archive area. The value of space_left is site dependant since the rate at which
events are generated varies with each deployment. The space_left_action is recom-
mended to be set to email.

Admin_space_left should be set to the amount of disk space on the audit partition
needed for admin actions to be recorded. Admin_space_left_action would be set to
single so that use of the machine is restricted to just the console.

The disk_full_action is triggered when no more room exists on the partition. All
access should be terminated since no more audit capability exists. This can be set
to either single or halt.

The disk_error_action should be set to syslog, single, or halt depending on your
local policies regarding handling of hardware malfunctions.

FILES
/etc/auditd.conf
Audit daemon configuration file