From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: John Dennis Subject: Re: Kernel audit output is inconsistent, hard to parse Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 20:15:36 -0500 Message-ID: <479FCFB8.2000101@redhat.com> References: <479FAF24.8050109@redhat.com> <479FB8BD.6010902@redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <479FB8BD.6010902@redhat.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: Miloslav Trmac Cc: linux-audit@redhat.com List-Id: linux-audit@redhat.com Miloslav Trmac wrote: > Hello, > John Dennis napsal(a): >> The current formatting of the record timestamp >> (e.g. audit(ssss.mmm:iii) is inconsistent with >> all other name/value pairs. It should be "seconds="sss" >> milliseconds="mmm" serial="iii", this allows parsing to be regular and >> consistent. > Isn't this unnecessarily verbose? Just > time="sss.mmm" serial="iii" > would be smaller, easier to read - and it would allow using better time > precision in the future. It's a reasonable argument. I can see value in either approach. >> It's a judgment call over when and how to introduce change >> and the anticipated impact. > If this change is implemented, we should use the opportunity to clean up > other inconsistencies in audit messages - e.g. different messages use > "success", "res" and "result" fields to record whether the audited > operation was successful. > > Also note that similar changes are necessary in user-space, e.g. > type=USER_ERR ...: ... msg='PAM: bad_ident acct=? : > exe="/usr/sbin/gdm-binary" (hostname=?, addr=?, terminal=? res=failed)' > contains name-value pairs within a value, using both pairs of quotes. Excellent points. Thank you for drawing attention to these. -- John Dennis