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

layout	page_title	sidebar_current	description
docs	Audit Backend: File	docs-audit-file	The "file" audit backend writes audit logs to a file.

Audit Backend: File

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

Rotation

The backend 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.

As of 0.6.2, sending a SIGHUP to the Vault process will cause file audit backends to close and re-open their underlying file, which can assist with log rotation needs.

Format

Each line in the audit log is a JSON object. The type field specifies what type of object it is. Currently, only two types exist: request and response. The line contains all of the information for any given request and response. By default, all the sensitive information is first hashed before logging in the audit logs.

Enabling

Via the CLI

Audit file backend can be enabled by the following command.

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

Any number of file audit logs can be created by enabling it with different paths.

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

Note the difference between audit-enable command options and the file backend configuration options. Use vault audit-enable -help to see the command options. Following are the configuration options available for the backend.

Backend configuration options

• file_path required The path to where the audit log will be written. If this path exists, the audit backend will append to it.
• log_raw optional A string containing a boolean value ('true'/'false'), if set, logs the security sensitive information without hashing, in the raw format. Defaults to `false`.
• hmac_accessor optional A string containing a boolean value ('true'/'false'), if set, enables the hashing of token accessor. Defaults to `true`. This option is useful only when `log_raw` is `false`.
• mode optional A string containing an octal number representing the bit pattern for the file mode, similar to `chmod`. This option defaults to `0600`.
• format optional Allows selecting the output format. Valid values are `json` (the default) and `jsonx`, which formats the normal log entries as XML.
• prefix optional Allows a customizable string prefix to write before the actual log line. Defaults to an empty string.