users logs

Marti, Rob RJM002 at shsu.edu
Wed Jun 10 13:05:55 UTC 2009


My problem with many of the attempts at logging the commands a user runs (and I havn't looked at yours George, so if yours does this then ignore me :) is they don't take things like vim into account.  If you vim a file, you can launch a shell from within that vim session and not have any of the normal logging process.  The bash auditing that RH set up for RHEL5 logs every keystroke, in and out of vim, etc.

Now, I'm not saying that I'd peruse these logs daily.  They'd only be of any use after the fact on any system that gets any real use.  And, to make sure that none of the data is corrupted remote logging is required.

Rob Marti

-----Original Message-----
From: redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of George Magklaras
Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 8:01 AM
To: General Red Hat Linux discussion list
Subject: Re: users logs

I have read your request and followed a bit the rather long thread. One 
way to tackle this issue, addressing the bad folk within and beyond is 
to use an execve logger. You might find my MPhil thesis interesting:

http://folk.uio.no/georgios/papers/magklarasmphilthesis.pdf

Page 202 of the Appendix contains sample code employing an execve 
logging wrapper. What this does is to give you all the commands execv-ed 
per user ID and dump them via syslogd to a suitable location. Collecting 
shell history files is not a good idea because it might omit important 
info and a simple text file is easily erasable by someone who is serious 
about covering his tracks. A log wrapper is not immune to a skilled 
attacker determined to cover his/her tracks but it is more difficult to 
circumvent. This should give you commands and arguments.

Be warned however that on a very busy system, this can I/O starve your 
machine. In fact, I am re-writing the wrapper calls to address these issues.

Hope this helps.

-- 
--
George Magklaras BSc Hons MPhil
RHCE:805008309135525

Senior Computer Systems Engineer/UNIX-Linux Systems Administrator
EMBnet Technical Management Board
The Biotechnology Centre of Oslo,
University of Oslo
http://folk.uio.no/georgios

Tel: +47-22840535

--

Abdelkader Yousfi wrote:
> All,
> 
> How can we know on RHEL what each users is doing on the system (commands,
> file accessing...etc)?
> Thanks!
> 
> Best Regards,
> Abdelkader Y.
> VAS & Intelligent Network Team Leader




-- 
redhat-list mailing list
unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request at redhat.com?subject=unsubscribe
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list




More information about the redhat-list mailing list