Re: [PATCH V3 1/2] audit: stop an old auditd being starved out by a new auditd

[Paul Moore <pmoore@redhat.com>]

On Tuesday, December 22, 2015 04:03:06 AM Richard Guy Briggs wrote:
> Nothing prevents a new auditd starting up and replacing a valid
> audit_pid when an old auditd is still running, effectively starving out
> the old auditd since audit_pid no longer points to the old valid auditd.
> 
> If no message to auditd has been attempted since auditd died unnaturally
> or got killed, audit_pid will still indicate it is alive.  There isn't
> an easy way to detect if an old auditd is still running on the existing
> audit_pid other than attempting to send a message to see if it fails.
> An -ECONNREFUSED almost certainly means it disappeared and can be
> replaced.  Other errors are not so straightforward and may indicate
> transient problems that will resolve themselves and the old auditd will
> recover.  Yet others will likely need manual intervention for which a
> new auditd will not solve the problem.
> 
> Send a new message type (AUDIT_REPLACE) to the old auditd containing a
> u32 with the PID of the new auditd.  If the audit replace message
> succeeds (or doesn't fail with certainty), fail to register the new
> auditd and return an error (-EEXIST).
> 
> This is expected to make the patch preventing an old auditd orphaning a
> new auditd redundant.
> 
> V3: Switch audit message type from 1000 to 1300 block.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Richard Guy Briggs <rgb@redhat.com>
> ---
>  include/uapi/linux/audit.h |    1 +
>  kernel/audit.c             |   16 +++++++++++++++-
>  2 files changed, 16 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/include/uapi/linux/audit.h b/include/uapi/linux/audit.h
> index 843540c..d820aa9 100644
> --- a/include/uapi/linux/audit.h
> +++ b/include/uapi/linux/audit.h
> @@ -110,6 +110,7 @@
>  #define AUDIT_SECCOMP		1326	/* Secure Computing event */
>  #define AUDIT_PROCTITLE		1327	/* Proctitle emit event */
>  #define AUDIT_FEATURE_CHANGE	1328	/* audit log listing feature changes 
*/
> +#define AUDIT_REPLACE		1329	/* Replace auditd if this packet...

Steve, are you okay with this record number?

-- 
paul moore
security @ redhat