auditd: no audit log file after reboot

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP5

Situation

Auditd is enabled and running.

 # systemctl status auditd.service
● auditd.service - Security Auditing Service
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/auditd.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Wed 2022-07-20 08:07:48 MDT; 4min 7s ago
     Docs: man:auditd(8)
           https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-documentation
  Process: 3567 ExecStartPost=/sbin/augenrules --load (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 3562 ExecStart=/sbin/auditd (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 3563 (auditd)
    Tasks: 2 (limit: 512)
   CGroup: /system.slice/auditd.service
           └─3563 /sbin/auditd

Jul 20 08:07:48 sles12sp5 systemd[1]: Starting Security Auditing Service...

After a system reboot, sometimes the system does not log entries in /var/log/audit.log. The timestamp of the log file remains unchanged or the same as the reboot time.

Within /var/log/messages following messages are observed:

kauditd hold queue overflow
kernel: kauditd_printk_skb: 11 callbacks suppressed

Resolution

As workaround a restart of auditd will solve it temporarily:

systemctl restart auditd.service

A fix has been released for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP5 with kernel version 4.12.14-122.127.1 or higher.

Cause

Root cause is a race condition in the communication between kernel and auditd instance that also led to kernel overflow messages.

Status

Reported to Engineering

Disclaimer

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