man > auditd(8)

AUDITD(8)                          System Administration Utilities                         AUDITD(8)

NAME
       auditd - The Linux Audit daemon

SYNOPSIS
       auditd [-f] [-l] [-n] [-s disable|enable|nochange] [-c <config_dir>]

DESCRIPTION
       auditd  is the userspace component to the Linux Auditing System. It's responsible for writing
       audit records to the disk. Viewing the logs is done with the ausearch or aureport  utilities.
       Configuring  the  audit  system  or  loading  rules is done with the auditctl utility. During
       startup, the rules in /etc/audit/audit.rules are read by auditctl and loaded into the kernel.
       Alternately, there is also an  augenrules  program  that  reads  rules  located  in  /etc/au‐
       dit/rules.d/  and  compiles  them  into an audit.rules file. The audit daemon itself has some
       configuration options that the admin may wish to customize. They are found in the auditd.conf
       file.

OPTIONS
       -f     leave the audit daemon in the foreground for debugging. Messages  also  go  to  stderr
              rather than the audit log.

       -l     allow the audit daemon to follow symlinks for config files.

       -n     no fork. This is useful for running off of inittab or systemd.

       -s=ENABLE_STATE
              specify when starting if auditd should change the current value for the kernel enabled
              flag. Valid values for ENABLE_STATE are "disable", "enable" or "nochange". The default
              is  to  enable (and disable when auditd terminates). The value of the enabled flag may
              be changed during the lifetime of auditd using 'auditctl -e'.

       -c     Specify alternate config file directory. Note that this same directory will be  passed
              to the dispatcher. (default: /etc/audit/)

SIGNALS
       SIGHUP causes  auditd to reconfigure. This means that auditd re-reads the configuration file.
              If there are no syntax errors, it will proceed to implement the requested changes.  If
              the  reconfigure  is successful, a DAEMON_CONFIG event is recorded in the logs. If not
              successful, error handling is controlled  by  space_left_action,  admin_space_left_ac‐
              tion, disk_full_action, and disk_error_action parameters in auditd.conf.


       SIGTERM
              caused  auditd  to  discontinue processing audit events, write a shutdown audit event,
              and exit.


       SIGUSR1
              causes auditd to immediately rotate the logs. It will consult the  max_log_file_action
              to see if it should keep the logs or not.


       SIGUSR2
              causes auditd to attempt to resume logging and passing events to plugins. This is usu‐
              ally  needed after logging has been suspended or the internal queue is overflowed. Ei‐
              ther of these conditions depends on the applicable configuration settings.

       SIGCONT
              causes auditd to dump a report of internal state to /var/run/auditd.state.


EXIT CODES
       1      Cannot adjust priority, daemonize, open audit netlink, write the pid  file,  start  up
              plugins, resolve the machine name, set audit pid, or other initialization tasks.


       2      Invalid or excessive command line arguments


       4      The audit daemon doesn't have sufficient privilege


       6      There is an error in the configuration file


FILES
       /etc/audit/auditd.conf - configuration file for audit daemon

       /etc/audit/audit.rules - audit rules to be loaded at startup

       /etc/audit/rules.d/ - directory holding individual sets of rules to be compiled into one file
       by augenrules.

       /etc/audit/plugins.d/ - directory holding individual plugin configuration files.

       /etc/audit/audit-stop - These rules are loaded when the audit daemon stops.

       /var/run/auditd.state - report about internal state.


NOTES
       A  boot param of audit=1 should be added to ensure that all processes that run before the au‐
       dit daemon starts is marked as auditable by the kernel.  Not  doing  that  will  make  a  few
       processes impossible to properly audit.

       The audit daemon can receive audit events from other audit daemons via the audisp-remote plu‐
       gin.  The audit daemon may be linked with tcp_wrappers to control which machines can connect.
       If this is the case, you can add an entry to hosts.allow and deny.


SEE ALSO
       auditd.conf(5), auditd-plugins(5), ausearch(8), aureport(8), auditctl(8), augenrules(8),  au‐
       dit.rules(7).


AUTHOR
       Steve Grubb

Red Hat                                       Sept 2021                                    AUDITD(8)