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  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/audit/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'.

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 attempt to resume  logging.  This  is  usually  needed  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

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

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), augenrules(8), audit.rules(7).

AUTHOR

       Steve Grubb