ausearch-expression(5) — Linux manual page

NAME | OVERVIEW | LEXICAL STRUCTURE | EXPRESSION SYNTAX | VIRTUAL FIELDS | SEMANTICS | EXAMPLES | FUTURE DIRECTIONS | AUTHOR | COLOPHON

AUSEARCH-EXPRESSION(5)         Linux Audit        AUSEARCH-EXPRESSION(5)

NAME         top

       ausearch-expression - audit search expression format

OVERVIEW         top

       This man page describes the format of "ausearch expressions".
       Parsing and evaluation of these expressions is provided by
       libauparse and is common to applications that use this library.

LEXICAL STRUCTURE         top

       White space (ASCII space, tab and new-line characters) between
       tokens is ignored.  The following tokens are recognized:

       Punctuation
              ( ) \

       Logical operators
              ! && ||

       Comparison operators
              < <= == > >= !== i= i!= r= r!=

       Unquoted strings
              Any non-empty sequence of ASCII letters, digits, and the _
              symbol.

       Quoted strings
              A sequence of characters surrounded by the " quotes.  The
              \ character starts an escape sequence.  The only defined
              escape sequences are \\ and \".  The semantics of other
              escape sequences is undefined.

       Regexps
              A sequence of characters surrounded by the / characters.
              The \ character starts an escape sequence.  The only
              defined escape sequences are \\ and \/.  The semantics of
              other escape sequences is undefined.

       Anywhere an unquoted string is valid, a quoted string is valid as
       well, and vice versa.  In particular, field names may be
       specified using quoted strings, and field values may be specified
       using unquoted strings.

EXPRESSION SYNTAX         top

       The primary expression has one of the following forms:

              field comparison-operator value

              \regexp string-or-regexp

       field is either a string, which specifies the first field with
       that name within the current audit record, or the \ escape
       character followed by a string, which specifies a virtual field
       with the specified name (virtual fields are defined in a later
       section).

       field is a string.  operator specifies the comparison to perform

       r= r!= Get the "raw" string of field, and compare it to value.
              For fields in audit records, the "raw" string is the exact
              string stored in the audit record (with all escaping and
              unprintable character encoding left alone); applications
              can read the "raw" string using auparse_get_field_str(3).
              Each virtual field may define a "raw" string.  If field is
              not present or does not define a "raw" string, the result
              of the comparison is false (regardless of the operator).

       i= i!= Get the "interpreted" string of field, and compare it to
              value.  For fields in audit records, the "interpreted"
              string is an "user-readable" interpretation of the field
              value; applications can read the "interpreted" string
              using auparse_interpret_field(3).  Each virtual field may
              define an "interpreted" string.  If field is not present
              or does not define an "interpreted" string, the result of
              the comparison is false (regardless of the operator).

       < <= == > >= !==
              Evaluate the "value" of field, and compare it to value.  A
              "value" may be defined for any field or virtual field, but
              no "value" is currently defined for any audit record
              field.  The rules of parsing value for comparing it with
              the "value" of field are specific for each field.  If
              field is not present, the result of the comparison is
              false (regardless of the operator).  If field does not
              define a "value", an error is reported when parsing the
              expression.

       In the special case of \regexp regexp-or-string, the current
       audit record is taken as a string (without interpreting field
       values), and matched against regexp-or-string.  regexp-or-string
       is an extended regular expression, using a string or regexp token
       (in other words, delimited by " or /).

       If E1 and E2 are valid expressions, then !  E1, E1 && E2, and E1
       || E2 are valid expressions as well, with the usual C semantics
       and evaluation priorities.  Note that !  field op value is
       interpreted as !(field op value), not as (!field) op value.

VIRTUAL FIELDS         top

       The following virtual fields are defined:

       \timestamp
              The value is the timestamp of the current event.  value
              must be formatted as:

                   ts:seconds.milli

              where seconds and milli are decimal numbers specifying the
              seconds and milliseconds part of the timestamp,
              respectively.

       \timestamp_ex
              This is similar to \timestamp but also includes the
              event's serial number.  value must be formatted as:

                   ts:seconds.milli:serial

              where serial is a decimal number specifying the event's
              serial number.

       \record_type
              The value is the type of the current record.  value is
              either the record type name, or a decimal number
              specifying the type.

SEMANTICS         top

       The expression as a whole applies to a single record.  The
       expression is true for a specified event if it is true for any
       record associated with the event.

EXAMPLES         top

       As a demonstration of the semantics of handling missing fields,
       the following expression is true if field is present:

              (field r= "") || (field r!= "")

       and the same expression surrounded by !( and ) is true if field
       is not present.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS         top

       New escape sequences for quoted strings may be defined.

       For currently defined virtual fields that do not define a "raw"
       or "interpreted" string, the definition may be added.  Therefore,
       don't rely on the fact that comparing the "raw" or "interpreted"
       string of the field with any value is false.

       New formats of value constants for the \timestamp virtual field
       may be added.

AUTHOR         top

       Miloslav Trmac

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the audit (Linux Audit) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://people.redhat.com/sgrubb/audit/⟩.  If you have a bug
       report for this manual page, send it to linux-audit@redhat.com.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-userspace.git⟩ on
       2023-12-22.  (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
       that was found in the repository was 2023-11-30.)  If you
       discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
       or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for
       the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
       information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original
       manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

Red Hat                         Feb 2008          AUSEARCH-EXPRESSION(5)

Pages that refer to this page: ausearch_add_expression(3)ausearch_add_interpreted_item(3)ausearch_add_item(3)ausearch_add_timestamp_item(3)ausearch_add_timestamp_item_ex(3)