Bug 727310 - default audit log rotation seems dangerously small
Summary: default audit log rotation seems dangerously small
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED ERRATA
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: audit
Version: 15
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
unspecified
low
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Steve Grubb
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2011-08-01 19:24 UTC by Robin Powell
Modified: 2011-08-31 01:29 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

Fixed In Version: audit-2.1.3-1.fc15
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2011-08-31 01:29:05 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Robin Powell 2011-08-01 19:24:15 UTC
The default audit log rotation, as it shows up on my brand-fresh F15 system, is:

num_logs = 4
max_log_file = 5
max_log_file_action = ROTATE

That means that at most ~20MiB of logs will be kept.

If something interesting (i.e. an active attack) is happening on a system, I'd expect that to result in losing the beginnings of the problem very quickly.

Just seems an unfortunate choice, although I'm sure there could be reasons I'm not aware of.

-Robin

Comment 1 Steve Grubb 2011-08-01 20:59:22 UTC
I am well aware of that. Just as you want more than 20Mb by default, there are people that don't want to waste 5 Mb on the audit logs. So, what do I do? I might bump it up to 30Mb and see if I get complaints to make it smaller, but everyone has different needs.

Comment 2 Robin Powell 2011-08-02 00:20:58 UTC
0.o  Seems to me that if you can't spare 5 MiB, you are on a system so small that managing the config is *required*.

Anyways, thanks for listening; I'm not going to throw a fit or anything, I just wanted to point it out.

-Robin

Comment 3 Robin Powell 2011-08-02 00:25:53 UTC
For what little it's worth, my solution was to turn off in-auditd rotation entirely and do daily rotation with logrotate and a restart, but I imagine that's far more likely to lose a message or two, and that the default needs to be something that is very very unlikely to ever do that.

-Robin

Comment 4 Steve Grubb 2011-08-13 12:02:05 UTC
Config updated:
https://fedorahosted.org/audit/changeset/558

Comment 5 Fedora Update System 2011-08-15 22:58:36 UTC
audit-2.1.3-1.fc15 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 15.
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/audit-2.1.3-1.fc15

Comment 6 Fedora Update System 2011-08-17 00:54:00 UTC
Package audit-2.1.3-1.fc15:
* should fix your issue,
* was pushed to the Fedora 15 testing repository,
* should be available at your local mirror within two days.
Update it with:
# su -c 'yum update --enablerepo=updates-testing audit-2.1.3-1.fc15'
as soon as you are able to.
Please go to the following url:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/audit-2.1.3-1.fc15
then log in and leave karma (feedback).

Comment 7 Fedora Update System 2011-08-31 01:29:00 UTC
audit-2.1.3-1.fc15 has been pushed to the Fedora 15 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.


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