open-vault/website/source/docs/audit/file.html.md

layout	page_title	sidebar_current	description
docs	File - Audit Devices	docs-audit-file	The "file" audit device writes audit logs to a file.

File Audit Device

The file audit device writes audit logs to a file. This is a very simple audit device: it appends logs to a file.

The device does not currently assist with any log rotation. There are very stable and feature-filled log rotation tools already, so we recommend using existing tools.

Sending a SIGHUP to the Vault process will cause file audit devices to close and re-open their underlying file, which can assist with log rotation needs.

Examples

Enable at the default path:

$ vault audit enable file file_path=/var/log/vault_audit.log

Enable at a different path. It is possible to enable multiple copies of an audit device:

$ vault audit enable -path="vault_audit_1" file file_path=/home/user/vault_audit.log

Configuration

• file_path (string: "") - The path to where the audit log will be written. If this path exists, the audit device will append to it. Specify "stdout" to write audit log to standard output. Specify "discard" to discard output (useful in testing scenarios).

• log_raw (bool: false) - If enabled, logs the security sensitive information without hashing, in the raw format.

• hmac_accessor (bool: true) - If enabled, enables the hashing of token accessor.

• mode (string: "0600") - A string containing an octal number representing the bit pattern for the file mode, similar to chmod.

• format (string: "json") - Allows selecting the output format. Valid values are "json" and "jsonx", which formats the normal log entries as XML.

• prefix (string: "") - A customizable string prefix to write before the actual log line.