syscall - "comm" field truncated

[Steve Grubb]

On Wednesday, April 06, 2016 10:05:35 AM Paul Moore wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 9:53 AM, Lev Stipakov <lstipakov at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > Sometimes audit of "execve" syscall generates events with truncated "comm"
> > values, for example:
> > 
> > type=SYSCALL msg=audit(1459950426.152:1097081): arch=c000003e syscall=59
> > success=yes exit=0 a0=35bae3e a1=1bc0cf0 a2=2b09280 a3=58c items=2
> > ppid=2183 pid=26566 auid=4294967295 uid=1001 gid=1001 euid=1001
> > suid=1001 fsuid=1001 egid=1001 sgid=1001 fsgid=1001 tty=(none)
> > ses=4294967295 comm="gnome-calculato" exe="/usr/bin/gnome-calculator"
> > 
> > Why "comm" is "gnome-calculato" and not "/usr/bin/gnome-calculator" ?
> 
> This is due to a limitation in how the kernel records the comm field
> and isn't likely to change.

And just to add some history to this, there was a big discussion about this 
back when the AUDIT_PROCTITLE record was added to syscall events. (Jan 2014) 
Mainline kernel wouldn't allow it to be increased. So, we wound up with the 
PROCTITLE record which supplies the missing information and more.

-Steve