[RFC] Comments on audit command line failure

[Steve Grubb]

On Monday, January 06, 2014 07:38:02 PM William Roberts wrote:
> I've been doing some testing of the recent audit cmdline patches,
> notably as many as the error paths as I can.
> 
> On a failure, the field is populated with null, like when key is null.

But (null) for a key field is normal rather than a failure.


> However, it has quotes, should I drop the quotes...
> 
> Example:
> 
> Now:
> cmdline="(null)" key=(null)
> 
> Proposed:
> cmdline=(null) key=(null)

The audit event format cannot change. EVER! If it has been changed due some 
patches, it must be changed back as fast as possible. Tools parse the log files 
and any format change can cause something important to be missed. Even the 
order of fields is important because some tools skip around taking advantage of 
the order to speed searches.

So, the correct thing is to make sure events are the same before and after the 
patches.

 
> I noticed that tty if its null also does not have quotes.

Quotes are only used when user space has influenced the value. We can't allow a 
crafty user/admin to setup fields that will cause a parsing error that hides 
and event from tools.

-Steve