AUDITD(8)                                        System Administration Utilities                                       AUDITD(8)



NAME
       auditd - The Linux Audit daemon

SYNOPSIS
       auditd [-f] [-l] [-n] [-s disable|enable|nochange]

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 rules is done with  the  auditctl
       utility.  During startup, the rules in /etc/audit/audit.rules are read by auditctl. The audit daemon itself has some con-
       figuration 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

       -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'.

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_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_size_action to see if it should keep the
              logs or not.


       SIGUSR2
              causes auditd to attemp to resume logging. This is usually used after logging has been suspended.


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

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


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 audispd plugin. 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), audispd(8), ausearch(8), aureport(8), auditctl(8), audit.rules(7).


AUTHOR
       Steve Grubb



Red Hat                                                     Sept 2007                                                  AUDITD(8)