WAS v8.5 > Reference > Log and trace file descriptions

Administrative audit messages in system logs

WAS v8.5 provides administrative audit messages in system logs containing some audit information. The audit messages described in this topic are part of the standard product audit stream and do not provide administrative event auditing information such as who changed files.

IBM recommends using the HPEL log and trace infrastructure. With HPEL, one views logs using the LogViewer command-line tool in PROFILE/bin.

The functionality described in this topic uses system logs and is not a part of the security auditing subsystem. The audit information captured by this functionality does not correspond with the audit information captured by the security auditing subsystem. For information about the security auditing subsystem, see the topic on auditing the security infrastructure.

Administrative audits use the same trace logging facility as the rest of the product, and do not use the logging facility that is a part of the security auditing subsystem. The audits are available in both the activity.log file and the SystemOut.log of the server that performs the action. We do not need to enable trace to produce the audits. However, through the Repository service console page, we can control whether configuration change auditing is done. This type of audit is done by default. Operational command auditing is always enabled. Information about which user performed the change is available only when security is enabled.

We can do administrative audits with or without the security audit facility.

The following administrative actions are audited:

• All configuration changes, in terms of the configuration documents created, modified, or deleted.
• Certain operational changes, like starting and stopping servers and applications. These managed bean (MBean) operations provide administrative auditing:

  Administrative auditing MBean operations. The MBean types provide administrative auditing MBean operations.

  MBean type	MBean operations
  Server	stop, stopImmediate

Configuration change audits have ADMRxxxxI message IDs, where xxxx is the message number. Operational audits have ADMN10xxI message IDs, where 10xx is the message number.

Here are some audit examples for the application server environment. The audit examples are found in the application server SystemOut.log file:

[7/23/03 17:04:49:089 CDT] 39c26dad FileRepositor A ADMR0015I: Document 
cells/ellingtonNetwork/security.xml was modified by user u1.
   [7/23/03 17:04:49:269 CDT] 3ea0edb5 FileRepositor A ADMR0016I: Document 
cells/ellingtonNetwork/nodes/ellington/app.policy was created by user u1.
   ...
   [7/23/03 17:13:54:081 CDT] 39a572a1 AdminHelper   A ADMN1008I: Attempt 
made to start the SamplesGallery application. (User ID = u1)
   ...
[7/23/03 17:39:59:360 CDT] 24865373 AdminHelper   A ADMN1020I: Attempt 
made to stop the server1 server. (User ID = u1)

The message text is split for printing purposes.

Repository service settings
Administer nodes and resources
Auditing the security infrastructure

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