Re: ntp audit spew.

From: Dave Jones
Date: Mon Sep 23 2019 - 15:49:05 EST


On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 02:57:08PM -0400, Paul Moore wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 12:58 PM Dave Jones <davej@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 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).
>
> What does your kernel command line look like? Do you have "audit=1"
> somewhere in there?

nope.

ro root=LABEL=/ biosdevname=0 net.ifnames=0 fsck.repair=yes systemd.gpt_auto=0 pcie_pme=nomsi ipv6.autoconf=0 erst_disable crashkernel=128M console=tty0 console=ttyS1,57600 intel_iommu=tboot_noforce

Dave