Bug#773528: systemd: enables audit without any hint on how to disable it

[Martin Steigerwald]

Package: systemd
Version: 218-2
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

I wondered about the huge lot of audit messages in dmesg and syslog.

The following is just after a fresh boot:

merkaba:~> dmesg | grep audit | wc -l
38
merkaba:~> dmesg | grep audit | grep suppr
[   11.835476] audit_printk_skb: 282 callbacks suppressed


I am not interested in these whatsoever. They spam my logs and make it
more difficult for me to find important things in my log.

Do I really have to set the kernel parameter audit=0 to disable those?


Or can I override

merkaba:~> dpkg -L systemd | grep audit
/lib/systemd/system/systemd-journald-audit.socket
/lib/systemd/system/sockets.target.wants/systemd-journald-audit.socket

in order to get rid of it.

It might be nice to place something about this in Jessie releasenotes.

Users will find this unexpected log messages in their logs and wonder what
they are about.

I´d really prefer if more additional features that systemd enables would
be opt-in rather then opt-out. I still want to feel in control about what
is happening on my machines.

Ciao,
Martin

-- Package-specific info:

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.0
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (200, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.18.0-tp520 (SMP w/4 CPU cores; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)

Versions of packages systemd depends on:
ii  acl             2.2.52-2
ii  adduser         3.113+nmu3
ii  initscripts     2.88dsf-58
ii  libacl1         2.2.52-2
ii  libaudit1       1:2.4-1+b1
ii  libblkid1       2.25.2-4
ii  libc6           2.19-13
ii  libcap2         1:2.24-6
ii  libcap2-bin     1:2.24-6
ii  libcryptsetup4  2:1.6.6-4
ii  libgcrypt20     1.6.2-4+b1
ii  libkmod2        18-3
ii  liblzma5        5.1.1alpha+20120614-2+b3
ii  libmount1       2.25.2-4
ii  libpam0g        1.1.8-3.1
ii  libselinux1     2.3-2
ii  libsystemd0     218-2
ii  mount           2.25.2-4
ii  sysv-rc         2.88dsf-58
ii  udev            215-8
ii  util-linux      2.25.2-4

Versions of packages systemd recommends:
ii  dbus            1.8.12-1
ii  libpam-systemd  218-2

Versions of packages systemd suggests:
ii  systemd-ui  3-2

-- no debconf information