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AUDIT_CONTROL(5)	      File Formats Manual	      AUDIT_CONTROL(5)

NAME
       audit_control --	audit system parameters

DESCRIPTION
       The  audit_control file contains	several	audit system parameters.  Each
       line of this file is of the form:

	     parameter:value

       The parameters are:

       dir     The directory where audit log files are stored.	There  may  be
	       more than one of	these entries.	Changes	to this	entry can only
	       be  enacted by restarting the audit system.  See	audit(8) for a
	       description of how to restart the audit system.

       dist    When set	to on or yes, auditd(8)	will be	creating hardlinks  to
	       all  trail files	in /var/audit/dist directory.  Those hardlinks
	       will be consumed	by the auditdistd(8) daemon.

       flags   Specifies which audit event classes are audited for all	users.
	       audit_user(5)  describes	 how  to  audit	 events	for individual
	       users.  See the information below for the format	of  the	 audit
	       flags.

       host    Specify	the hostname or	IP address to be used when setting the
	       local systems's audit host information.	This hostname will  be
	       converted  into	an  IP or IPv6 address and will	be included in
	       the header of each audit	record.	 Due  to  the  possibility  of
	       transient  errors  coupled  with	the security issues in the DNS
	       protocol	itself,	the use	of DNS should be avoided.  Instead, it
	       is strongly recommended that the	hostname be specified  in  the
	       /etc/hosts file.	 For more information see hosts(5).

       naflags
	       Contains	the audit flags	that define what classes of events are
	       audited when an action cannot be	attributed to a	specific user.

       minfree
	       The  minimum  free space	required on the	file system audit logs
	       are being written to.  When the free  space  falls  below  this
	       limit  a	 warning  will be issued.  If no value for the minimum
	       free space is set, the default of 20 percent is applied by  the
	       kernel.

       policy  A  list	of global audit	policy flags specifying	various	behav-
	       iors, such as fail stop,	auditing of paths and arguments, etc.

       filesz  Maximum trail size in bytes; if set to a	non-0 value, the audit
	       daemon will rotate the audit trail file at  around  this	 size.
	       Sizes  less  than the minimum trail size	(default of 512K) will
	       be rejected as invalid.	If 0, trail files will not be automat-
	       ically rotated based on file size.  For convenience, the	 trail
	       size  may be expressed with suffix letters: B (Bytes), K	(Kilo-
	       bytes), M (Megabytes), or G (Gigabytes).	 For  example,	2M  is
	       the same	as 2097152.

       expire-after
	       Specifies  when	audit  log  files  will	expire and be removed.
	       This may	be after a time	period has passed since	the  file  was
	       last  written  to  or when the aggregate	of all the trail files
	       have reached a specified	size or	a combination of both.	If  no
	       expire-after  parameter	is given then audit log	files will not
	       expire and be removed by	the audit control system.  See the in-
	       formation below for the format of the expiration	specification.

       qsize   Specifies the maximum number  of	 outstanding  committed	 audit
	       records	that  can be in	the kernel's post-commit queue pending
	       write to	disk.  If this number has been reached,	 user  threads
	       performing an auditable event will be suspended until the queue
	       has fallen below	the limit.  Depending on the underlying	kernel
	       implementation, the number of in-flight records can exceed this
	       number,	as  it	does  not constrain uncommitted	records	(e.g.,
	       those associated	with incomplete	auditable system  calls),  and
	       may  also  exclude  the set of records extracted	from the queue
	       and currently being prepared for	or undergoing I/O.  Other  op-
	       erational limits	may be affected	by this	parameter, such	as the
	       minimum	free  space on disk required to	continue system	opera-
	       tion, estimated as the maximum number  of  allowable  in-flight
	       records multiplied by the maximum audit record size.

AUDIT FLAGS
       Audit  flags  are a comma-delimited list	of audit classes as defined in
       the audit_class(5) file.	 Event classes may be  preceded	 by  a	prefix
       which changes their interpretation.  The	following prefixes may be used
       for each	class:

	     (none)  Record both successful and	failed events.
	     +	     Record successful events.
	     -	     Record failed events.
	     ^	     Record neither successful nor failed events.
	     ^+	     Do	not record successful events.
	     ^-	     Do	not record failed events.

AUDIT POLICY FLAGS
       The  policy  flags field	is a comma-delimited list of policy flags from
       the following list:

	     cnt       Allow processes to continue running even	though	events
		       are  not	 being audited.	 If not	set, processes will be
		       suspended when the  audit  store	 space	is  exhausted.
		       Currently, this is not a	recoverable state.
	     ahlt      Fail  stop the system if	unable to audit	an event--this
		       consists	of first draining pending records to disk, and
		       then halting the	operating system.
	     argv      Audit command line arguments to execve(2).
	     arge      Audit environmental variable arguments to execve(2).
	     seq       Include a unique	audit sequence number token in	gener-
		       ated  audit records (not	implemented on FreeBSD or Dar-
		       win).
	     group     Include supplementary groups list  in  generated	 audit
		       records	(not implemented on FreeBSD or Darwin; supple-
		       mentary groups are never	included in records  on	 these
		       systems).
	     trail     Append a	trailer	token to each audit record (not	imple-
		       mented  on  FreeBSD  or Darwin; trailers	are always in-
		       cluded in records on these systems).
	     path      Include secondary file paths in audit records (not  im-
		       plemented  on  FreeBSD  or  Darwin; secondary paths are
		       never included in records on these systems).
	     zonename  Include a zone ID token with each audit record (not im-
		       plemented on FreeBSD or Darwin; FreeBSD	audit  records
		       do not currently	include	the jail ID or name).
	     perzone   Enable auditing for each	local zone (not	implemented on
		       FreeBSD	or  Darwin; on FreeBSD,	audit records are col-
		       lected from all jails and placed	 in  a	single	global
		       trail,  and  only  limited audit	controls are permitted
		       within a	jail).

       It is recommended that installations set	the cnt	flag but not ahlt flag
       unless it is intended that audit	logs exceeding	available  disk	 space
       halt the	system.

AUDIT LOG EXPIRATION SPECIFICATION
       The  expiration	specification  can be one value	or two values with the
       logical conjunction of AND/OR between them.  Values for the  audit  log
       file age	are numbers with the following suffixes:

	     s		 Log file age in seconds.
	     h		 Log file age in hours.
	     d		 Log file age in days.
	     y		 Log file age in years.

       Values for the disk space used are numbers with the following suffixes:

	     (space) or
	     B		 Disk space used in Bytes.
	     K		 Disk space used in Kilobytes.
	     M		 Disk space used in Megabytes.
	     G		 Disk space used in Gigabytes.

       The suffixes on the values are case sensitive.  If both an age and disk
       space  value  are  used they are	separated by AND or OR and both	values
       are used	to determine when audit	log files expire.  In the case of AND,
       both the	age and	disk space conditions must be met before the log  file
       is  removed.   In  the  case of OR, either condition may	expire the log
       file.  For example:

	     expire-after: 60d AND 1G

       will expire files that are older	than 60	days but only if 1 gigabyte of
       disk space total	is being used by the audit logs.

DEFAULT
       The following settings appear in	the default audit_control file:

	     dir:/var/audit
	     flags:lo,aa
	     minfree:5
	     naflags:lo,aa
	     policy:cnt,argv
	     filesz:2M
	     expire-after:10M

       The flags parameter above specifies the system-wide mask	 corresponding
       to  login/logout	 as  well  as authentication and authorization events.
       The policy parameter specifies that the system should neither fail stop
       nor suspend processes when the audit store fills	and that command  line
       arguments should	be audited for AUE_EXECVE events.  The trail file will
       be automatically	rotated	by the audit daemon when the file size reaches
       approximately  2MB.   Trail files will expire when their	aggregate size
       exceeds 10MB.

FILES
       /etc/security/audit_control

SEE ALSO
       auditon(2), audit(4),  audit_class(5),  audit_event(5),	audit_user(5),
       audit(8), auditd(8)

HISTORY
       The OpenBSM implementation was created by McAfee	Research, the security
       division	of McAfee Inc.,	under contract to Apple	Computer Inc. in 2004.
       It was subsequently adopted by the TrustedBSD Project as	the foundation
       for the OpenBSM distribution.

AUTHORS
       This software was created by McAfee Research, the security research di-
       vision  of  McAfee,  Inc., under	contract to Apple Computer Inc.	 Addi-
       tional authors include Wayne Salamon, Robert Watson, and	SPARTA Inc.

       The Basic Security Module (BSM) interface to audit  records  and	 audit
       event stream format were	defined	by Sun Microsystems.

FreeBSD	14.3			August 19, 2016		      AUDIT_CONTROL(5)

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