Re: ntp audit spew.

[Dave Jones]

On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 12:14:14PM -0400, Paul Moore wrote:
 > On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 11:50 AM Dave Jones <davej@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
 > >
 > > I have some hosts that are constantly spewing audit messages like so:
 > >
 > > [46897.591182] audit: type=1333 audit(1569250288.663:220): op=offset old=2543677901372 new=2980866217213
 > > [46897.591184] audit: type=1333 audit(1569250288.663:221): op=freq old=-2443166611284 new=-2436281764244
 > > [48850.604005] audit: type=1333 audit(1569252241.675:222): op=offset old=1850302393317 new=3190241577926
 > > [48850.604008] audit: type=1333 audit(1569252241.675:223): op=freq old=-2436281764244 new=-2413071187316
 > > [49926.567270] audit: type=1333 audit(1569253317.638:224): op=offset old=2453141035832 new=2372389610455
 > > [49926.567273] audit: type=1333 audit(1569253317.638:225): op=freq old=-2413071187316 new=-2403561671476
 > >
 > > This gets emitted every time ntp makes an adjustment, which is apparently very frequent on some hosts.
 > >
 > >
 > > Audit isn't even enabled on these machines.
 > >
 > > # auditctl -l
 > > No rules
 > 
 > What happens when you run 'auditctl -a never,task'?  That *should*
 > silence those messages as the audit_ntp_log() function has the
 > requisite audit_dummy_context() check.

They still get emitted.

 > FWIW, this is the distro
 > default for many (most? all?) distros; for example, check
 > /etc/audit/audit.rules on a stock Fedora system.

As these machines aren't using audit, they aren't running auditd either.
Essentially: nothing enables audit, but the kernel side continues to log
ntp regardless (no other audit messages seem to do this).

	Dave