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 re-
sponsible for writing audit records to the disk. Viewing the logs is
done with the ausearch or aureport utilities. Configuring the audit sys-
tem 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/audit/rules.d/ and compiles them into an au-
dit.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 di-
rectory 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 pro-
ceed 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_action, 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 usually needed after logging has been suspended
or the internal queue is overflowed. Either of these conditions
depends on the applicable configuration settings.
SIGCONT
causes auditd to dump a report of internal state to /var/run/au-
ditd.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 configura-
tion files.
/etc/audit/audit-stop.rules - These rules are loaded when the audit dae-
mon 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 audit 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 plugin. The audit daemon may be linked with tcp_wrap-
pers 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), au-
ditctl(8), augenrules(8), audit.rules(7).
AUTHOR
Steve Grubb
Red Hat Sept 2021 AUDITD(8)
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