HP-UX Reference (11i v2 07/12) - 2 System Calls (vol 5)

audwrite(2) audwrite(2)

NAME

audwrite() - write an audit record for a self-auditing process

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/audit.h>

int audwrite(const struct self_audit_rec *audrec_p);

DESCRIPTION

audwrite() is called by trusted self-auditing processes, which are capable of turning off the regular

auditing (using the audswitch() system call, see audswitch(2),) and doing higher-level auditing on their

own.

audwrite() is restricted to users with the

SELFAUDIT privilege.

audwrite() checks to see if the auditing system is on and the calling process and the event speciﬁed are

being audited. If these conditions are met, audwrite()

writes the audit record pointed to by audrec_p

into the audit ﬁle. The record consists of an audit record body and a header with the following ﬁelds:

u_long ah_time; /*; Date/time (tv_sec of timeval) */

pid_t ah_pid; /*; Process ID */

u_short ah_error; /*; Success/failure */

u_short ah_event; /*; Event being audited */

u_short ah_len; /*; Length of variant part */

The header has the same format as the regular audit record, while the body contains additional information

about the high-level audit event. The header ﬁelds ah_error, ah_event, and ah_len are speciﬁed by

the calling process.

audwrite() ﬁlls in ah_time and ah_pid ﬁelds with the correct values. this is

done to reduce the risk of forgery. After the header is completed, the record body is attached and the

entire record is written into the current audit ﬁle.

Security Restrictions

Some or all of the actions associated with this system call require the SELFAUDIT privilege. Processes

owned by the superuser have this privilege. Processes owned by other users may have this privilege,

depending on system conﬁguration. See privileges(5) for more information about privileged access on sys-

tems that support ﬁne-grained privileges.

RETURN VALUE

If the write is successful, a value of

0 is returned. Otherwise, a value of -1

is returned and errno is set

to indicate the reason for the failure.

ERRORS

audwrite() fails if one of the following is true:

[EPERM] The caller does not possess the SELFAUDIT privilege.

[EINVAL] The event number in the audit record is invalid.

WARNINGS

If audwrite() causes a ﬁle space overﬂow, the calling process might be suspended until the ﬁle space is

cleaned up. However, a returned call with the return value of 0 indicates that the audit record has been

successfully written.

AUTHOR

audwrite() was developed by HP.