Re: [PATCH] audit: set TIF_AUDIT_SYSCALL only if audit filter has been populated

[Steve Grubb]

On Tuesday, March 13, 2018 8:28:57 PM EDT Jiri Kosina wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Mar 2018, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> > > Yes...I wished I was in on the beginning of this discussion. Here's the
> > > problem. We need all tasks auditable unless specifically dismissed as
> > > uninteresting. This would be a task,never rule.
> > > 
> > > The way we look at it, is if it boots with audit=1, then we know auditd
> > > is expected to run at some point. So, we need all tasks to stay
> > > auditable. If they weren't and auditd enabled auditing, then we'd need
> > > to walk the whole proctable and stab TIF_AUDIT_SYSCALL into every
> > > process in the system. It was decided that this is too ugly.
> > 
> > When was that decided?  That's what this patch does.
> 
> I'd like to see some more justification as well.

There was some discussion about removing the flag here:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/linux-audit/2007-October/msg00053.html

-Steve

> Namely, if I compare "setting TIF_AUDIT_SYSCALL for every process on a
> need-to-be-so basis" to "we always go through the slow path and
> pessimistically assume that audit is enabled and has reasonable ruleset
> loaded", I have my own (different) opinion of what is too ugly.