Re: [RFC][PATCH] collect security labels on user processes generating audit messages

["Timothy R. Chavez" <tinytim@us.ibm.com>]

On Wed, 2006-02-15 at 11:41 -0500, Steve Grubb wrote:
> On Wednesday 15 February 2006 11:37, Stephen Smalley wrote:
> > > It creates parsing problems without a value. If I saw "tty="  and that's
> > > all, I'd think the audit system malfunctioned and file a bugzilla. I
> > > don't want that.
> >
> > OTOH, if I see (null), I tend to assume a bug in the code.  Isn't it
> > saner to just omit the name=value pair altogether if the value is NULL?
> 
> No, cause then I have non-normalized records.
> 
> > Otherwise, you are adding extra processing on the generation and parsing
> > side for no benefit, along with wasting space in the audit message.
> 
> There is a benefit...no missing fields means that the record is normalized. 
> This is a required step before we create a binary format record. 
> 
> There are performance benefits in the kernel as well as user space. The kernel 
> doesn't have to have an "if" statement with 2 nearly identical calls to 
> audit_log_format or 2 back to back calls to the same function adding a new 
> piece of info. 
> 
> In userspace, I can parse it faster since I don't have to backtrack and 
> re-parse from the last good token to look for the next field after deciding 
> one is missing.
> 
> -Steve

Steve,

I agree with you.  Also, we could have 'ausearch' interpret a (null)
differently depending on token.  So perhaps an ausearch on a record
where subj=(null), would return subj=disabled.

-tim


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