From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Michael C Thompson Subject: Re: What is expected: exclude action on the never list? Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 17:27:55 -0500 Message-ID: <447CC6EB.4070205@us.ibm.com> References: <447CAEE6.1030501@us.ibm.com> <200605301712.50107.sgrubb@redhat.com> <447CB66B.20005@hp.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <447CB66B.20005@hp.com> List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: linux-audit-bounces@redhat.com Errors-To: linux-audit-bounces@redhat.com To: Linda Knippers Cc: Linux Audit List-Id: linux-audit@redhat.com Linda Knippers wrote: > Steve Grubb wrote: >> On Tuesday 30 May 2006 16:45, Michael C Thompson wrote: >> >>> I would read the second rule as saying "do not exclude messages of type >>> SYSCALL". Is this a correct interpretation of the rule? >> >> That sounds reasonable, but I don't think that's what the kernel does. Maybe >> it should be corrected. I think its a 1 or 2 liner. > > According to the manpage, I'd say the kernel is behaving as expected. > > "Never" means never generate an audit record and "exclude" means even if > one was generated, it should be excluded. The two options together are > somewhat redundant but I don't think "never" was intended to mean "never > do what the previous option just said to do", at least not according to > the manpage. Agreed. The wording is... confusing when compared to the rule. I guess the real question which needs to be answered is "Do we need to be able to force the capture of a rule?"... since audit by default does not audit anything, and you have to explicitly add filters, I would say "no" to this question. That said, I think we should leave "exclude,always" as is, and either change the man page to say something about "exclude,never" being the same as "exclude,always", _or_ change the userspace to indicate that "exclude,never" doesn't make sense. Thanks, Mike