Linux audit performance impact

Tue Feb 3 12:03:43 UTC 2015

How many events can kernel accumulate without I/o ?

On Tuesday, February 3, 2015, Viswanath, Logeswari P (MCOU OSTL) <
logeswari.pv at hp.com> wrote:

> I don't want to disable auditing (i.e. disable audit record collection),
> but just do not want the records to delivered to user space since I want to
> remove the I/O overhead while running the performance test.
> Is there any option for this?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Guy Briggs [mailto:rgb at redhat.com <javascript:;>]
> Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2015 10:23 PM
> To: Viswanath, Logeswari P (MCOU OSTL)
> Cc: Satish Chandra Kilaru; Steve Grubb; linux-audit at redhat.com
> <javascript:;>
> Subject: Re: Linux audit performance impact
>
> On 15/01/29, Viswanath, Logeswari P (MCOU OSTL) wrote:
> > Please read my question as “Is there any option to configure kaudit
> > not to log audit records to syslog? when auditd not running.”
>
> Yeah, remove audit=1 from the kernel command line, or set audit=0 in its
> place.  This will stop all but AVCs and if auditd has ever run since boot.
> If audit=0 is on the kernel boot line, it will be impossible to run auditd.
>
> There is a feature request that is likely coming soon that could be
> useful:
>
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1160046
> "If no audit daemon is running, but an audit multicast subscriber is
> around, then the kernel shouldn't forward audit data to kmsg"
>
> > From: Viswanath, Logeswari P (MCOU OSTL)
> > Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2015 11:49 AM
> > To: 'Satish Chandra Kilaru'; Steve Grubb
> > Cc: linux-audit at redhat.com <javascript:;>
> > Subject: RE: Linux audit performance impact
> >
> > Is there any option to configure kaudit not to log audit records to
> syslog when auditd is running?
> > This way we can assess the impact of enabling audit without involving
> disk I/o overhead.
> >
> > From: Satish Chandra Kilaru [mailto:iam.kilaru at gmail.com <javascript:;>]
> > Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2015 9:12 AM
> > To: Steve Grubb
> > Cc: linux-audit at redhat.com <javascript:;><mailto:linux-audit at redhat.com
> <javascript:;>>; Viswanath,
> > Logeswari P (MCOU OSTL)
> > Subject: Re: Linux audit performance impact
> >
> > I agree with you... but writing to disk can trigger further events
> leading spiralling of events...
> > I brought down my server few times with stupid rules...
> >
> > On Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 10:39 PM, Steve Grubb <sgrubb at redhat.com
> <javascript:;><mailto:sgrubb at redhat.com <javascript:;>>> wrote:
> > On Wednesday, January 28, 2015 10:18:47 AM Satish Chandra Kilaru wrote:
> > > Write your own program to receive audit events directly without
> > > using auditd...
> > > That should be faster ....
> > > Auditd will log the events to disk causing more I/o than u need...
> >
> > But even that is configurable in many ways. You can decide if you want
> > logging to disk or not and what kind of assurance that it made it to
> > disk and the priority of that audit daemon. Then you also have all the
> > normal tuning knobs for disk throughput that you would use for any
> > disk performance critical system.
> >
> > -Steve
> >
> > > On Wednesday, January 28, 2015, Viswanath, Logeswari P (MCOU OSTL) <
> > >
> > > logeswari.pv at hp.com <javascript:;><mailto:logeswari.pv at hp.com
> <javascript:;>>> wrote:
> > > >  Hi Steve,
> > > >
> > > > I am Logeswari working for HP.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > We want to know audit performance impact on RHEL and Suse linux to
> > > > help us evaluate linux audit as data source for our host based IDS.
> > > >
> > > > When we ran our own performance test with a test audispd plugin,
> > > > we found if a system can perform 200000 open/close system calls
> > > > per second without auditing, system can perform only 3000
> > > > open/close system calls auditing is enabled for open/close system
> > > > call which is a HUGE impact on the system performance. It would be
> > > > great if anyone can help us answering the following questions.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > 1)      Is this performance impact expected? If yes, what is the
> reason
> > > > behind it and can we fix it?
> > > >
> > > > 2)      Have anyone done any benchmarking for performance impact? If
> yes,
> > > > can you please share the numbers and also the steps/programs used
> > > > the run the same.
> > > >
> > > > 3)      Help us validating the performance test we have done in our
> test
> > > > setup using the steps mentioned along with the results attached.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Attached test program (loader.c) to invoke open and close system
> calls.
> > > >
> > > > Attached idskerndsp is the audispd plugin program.
> > > >
> > > > We used time command to determine how much time the system took to
> > > > complete 50000 open/close system calls without (results attached
> > > > Without-auditing) and with auditing enabled on the system
> > > > (With-auditing-NOLOG-audispd-plugin and With-auditing-RAW)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > System details:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > 1 CPU machine
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > *OS Version*
> > > >
> > > > RHEL 6.5
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > *Kernel Version*
> > > >
> > > > uname –r
> > > >
> > > > 2.6.32-431.el6.x86_64
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Note: auditd was occupying 35% of CPU and was sleeping for most of
> > > > the time whereas kauditd was occupying 20% of the CPU.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Thanks & Regards,
> > > >
> > > > Logeswari.
> >
> >
> >
> > --
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>
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>
>
> - RGB
>
> --
> Richard Guy Briggs <rbriggs at redhat.com <javascript:;>>
> Senior Software Engineer, Kernel Security, AMER ENG Base Operating
> Systems, Red Hat Remote, Ottawa, Canada
> Voice: +1.647.777.2635, Internal: (81) 32635, Alt: +1.613.693.0684x3545
>

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