useradd question

Steve Grubb sgrubb at redhat.com
Fri May 17 12:44:04 UTC 2019


On Thursday, May 16, 2019 7:00:38 PM EDT Lenny Bruzenak wrote:
> If I add a new user with the "useradd" utility, it submits a ADD_USER
> event, but the event itself has no interpretation for the new UID.

What exactly was typed in at the command line? This is caused by this line of 
code:

https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-userspace/blob/master/lib/
audit_logging.c#L480

The idea is that we want to rely on the number rather than the name. However, 
the log event is supposed to be created after passwd and shadow have been 
updated. So, the audit daemon should be able to resolve the event. 

Maybe useradd needs to be straced to see if it does everything in one shot or 
if it sends multiple events as it builds the user.
 
> IOW, the "id" field is numeric and the translated data at the end of the
> raw record has "ID=unknown(number)".
> 
> I'm guessing it is because until the user data has been successfully
> entered, there is no translation. Perhaps the event submission should
> wait until that happens?

I'd say strace useradd will have the answer.

> I may be able to dig out the name from other related generated events,
> but that is kind of a pain.

Right. Let's see what the root cause is and then what we can do about it.

-Steve





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