[PATCH] Audit: save audit_backlog_limit audit messages in case auditd comes back

[Steve Grubb]

On Thursday 27 March 2008 20:52:03 Eric Paris wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 17:50 -0400, Steve Grubb wrote:
> > On Thursday 27 March 2008 17:37:44 Eric Paris wrote:
> > > If auditd never starts the kernel will hold by default up to 64
> > > messages in memory forever.
> >
> > I have an idea. Maybe this behavior could be enabled if audit=1 is passed
> > as a boot parameter. In this way, you would know that the user intended
> > for the audit daemon to start at some point. You could then call audit
> > panic or whatever else is normal. If no audit=1 is passed, you could just
> > do the printk like usual and not waste memory. Would this be helpful?
>
> I could probably do that.  I also could conditionalize it on auditd ever
> having run.  I can't imagine it is normal for auditd to be running and
> then stopped forever....

Could be, but if auditd stops, we normally send things go to syslog.


> Anyone else see value in that situation?  Only do it on boot if audit=1
> is passed?  Does anyone actually use that command line option?

Yes, anyone that is serious about audit *has* to use that boot option. That is 
the one thing that differentiates a casual user from a serious user of audit. 
The serious user would always be expecting auditd to start at some point.

-Steve