auditd startup timing out during system startup

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.5
  • audit-2.8.1-3.el7

Issue

Once in about 20 boots auditd times out during startup:

[root@server ~]# systemctl status auditd.service
  auditd.service - Security Auditing Service
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/auditd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: signal) since Wed 2018-06-13 20:02:17 UTC; 1h 12min ago
     Docs: man:auditd(8)
           https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-documentation
  Process: 499 ExecStart=/sbin/auditd (code=killed, signal=KILL)

Jun 13 19:59:17 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Starting Security Auditing Service...
Jun 13 19:59:17 localhost.localdomain auditd[503]: Started dispatcher: /sbin/audispd pid: 505
Jun 13 20:00:47 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: auditd.service start operation timed out. Terminating.
Jun 13 20:02:17 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: auditd.service stop-final-sigterm timed out. Killing.
Jun 13 20:02:17 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: auditd.service: control process exited, code=killed status=9
Jun 13 20:02:17 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Failed to start Security Auditing Service.
Jun 13 20:02:17 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Unit auditd.service entered failed state.
Jun 13 20:02:17 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: auditd.service failed.

Resolution

Update to audit-2.8.1-3.el7_5.1 released with Advisory RHBA-2018:2463 or newer.

Root Cause

Previously, auditd process could hang due to signal race condition. With this update, an unnecessary function call has been removed, and the described problem no longer occurs.

The bug was tracked by public Bug 1587995.

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