oxidecomputer / oxidecomputer/helios-engvm

Turn on sshd authentication logging by default

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Shell
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Description

In a discussion in #oxide-q&a on 2023-03-08, it came up that our helios engvm doesn't have sshd authentication logging turned on by default. We should consider changing the default so that sshd auth logging is turned on.

Meanwhile, to do so manually:

  1. Add the following to /etc/syslog.conf:

    auth.info	/var/log/authlog
    

    (The separator MUST be a tab character, not spaces.)

  2. Restart the syslog service: svcadm restart system-log.


Additional debugging

In the discussion mentioned above, it turned out that there's a bug in SMF that caused the syslog service to not be functioning at all. To see if you've hit that bug, run cat $(svcs -L system-log:default). The output below indicates a bug:

[ Mar  8 21:40:11 Stopping because service restarting. ]
[ Mar  8 21:40:11 Method property group 'stop' is not present. ]
[ Mar  8 21:40:11 Method property group 'start' is not present. ]

To work around the bug, run:

svcadm disable system-log:default
svccfg delete system-log
pfexec svccfg import /lib/svc/manifest/system/system-log.xml
svcadm enable system-log

After performing the above steps, and with the auth.info line in /etc/syslog.conf, I started seeing entries in /var/log/authlog.

cc @jclulow, @wesolows

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by locating where the Helios image tooling assembles or configures /etc/syslog.conf, then inspect the system-log service setup described in the issue. Verify the resulting image has the auth.info line enabled and that authentication events are written to /var/log/authlog; use the listed svcadm and svccfg commands only to diagnose service failures.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
shell
Domain
devops, operating-systems, security
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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