AUDIT(8)                    System Manager's Manual                   AUDIT(8)

NAME
     audit – audit management utility

DEPRECATION NOTICE
     The audit(4) subsystem has been deprecated since macOS 11.0, disabled
     since macOS 14.0, and WILL BE REMOVED in a future version of macOS.
     Applications that require a security event stream should use the
     EndpointSecurity(7) API instead.

     On this version of macOS, you can re-enable audit(4) by renaming or
     copying /etc/security/audit_control.example to
     /etc/security/audit_control, re-enabling the system/com.apple.auditd
     service by running launchctl enable system/com.apple.auditd as root, and
     rebooting.

SYNOPSIS
     audit -e | -i | -n | -s | -t | -c

DESCRIPTION
     The audit utility controls the state of the audit system.  One of the
     following flags is required as an argument to audit:

     -e      Forces the audit system to immediately remove audit log files
             that meet the expiration criteria specified in the audit control
             file without doing a log rotation.

     -i      Initializes and starts auditing.  This option is currently for
             Mac OS X only and requires auditd(8) to be configured to run
             under launchd(8).

     -n      Forces the audit system to close the existing audit log file and
             rotate to a new log file in a location specified in the audit
             control file.  Also, audit log files that meet the expiration
             criteria specified in the audit control file will be removed.

     -s      Specifies that the audit system should [re]synchronize its
             configuration from the audit control file.  A new log file will
             be created. The attributable flags parameter from the
             audit_control(5) configuration file is set at login time and is
             not synchronized with this flag.

     -t      Specifies that the audit system should terminate.  Log files are
             closed and renamed to indicate the time of the shutdown.

     -c      Specifies that audit should query the audit condition and exit
             successfully only if auditing is enabled in the kernel.

NOTES
     The auditd(8) daemon must already be running.  Optionally, it can be
     configured to be started on-demand by launchd(8) (Mac OS X only).  The
     audit utility requires audit administrator privileges for successful
     operation.

FILES
     /etc/security/audit_control      Audit policy file used to configure the
                                      auditing system.

SEE ALSO
     audit(4), audit_control(5), auditd(8), launchd(8)

HISTORY
     The OpenBSM implementation was created by McAfee Research, the security
     division of McAfee Inc., under contract to Apple Computer Inc. in 2004.
     It was subsequently adopted by the TrustedBSD Project as the foundation
     for the OpenBSM distribution.

AUTHORS
     This software was created by McAfee Research, the security research
     division of McAfee, Inc., under contract to Apple Computer Inc.
     Additional authors include Wayne Salamon, Robert Watson, and SPARTA Inc.

     The Basic Security Module (BSM) interface to audit records and audit
     event stream format were defined by Sun Microsystems.

macOS 15.2                     January 29, 2009                     macOS 15.2