Database Manual / Reference / Database Commands / Auditing

setAuditConfig (database command)

Important

Deprecated in version 7.1: Use the auditConfig cluster parameter instead.

Definition

setAuditConfig

New in version 5.0.

setAuditConfig is an administrative command that sets new audit configurations for mongod and mongos server instances at runtime.

Use the db.adminCommand( { command } ) method to run setAuditConfig against the admin database.

Compatibility

This command is available in deployments hosted in the following environments:

Important

This command is not supported in MongoDB Atlas clusters. For information on Atlas support for all commands, see Unsupported Commands.

Syntax

The command has the following syntax:

db.adminCommand(
   {
     setAuditConfig: 1,
     filter: <Filter Document>,
     auditAuthorizationSuccess: <Boolean>
   }
)

Command Fields

The command has the following fields:

FieldTypeDescription

setAuditConfig

integer

Run setAuditConfig

filter

document

An audit filter

auditAuthorizationSuccess

boolean

Log all, or only failed access authorizations

Behavior

Enable auditing to use setAuditConfig at runtime.

auditAuthorizationSuccess enables auditing of authorization success for the authCheck action. The parameter value must be true to audit read and write operations. However, when auditAuthorizationSuccess is false auditing has less performance impact because the audit system only logs authorization failures.

Configuration updates are distributed via the oplog mechanism which means updates on mongod nodes are distributed to secondary nodes very quickly. There is a different distribution mechanism on mongos nodes. mongos nodes have to poll the primary server at regular intervals for configuration updates. You may see stale data due to polling delay if you run setAuditConfig on the primary server and getAuditConfig on a shard before the shard has polled the primary server for updated configuration details.

Examples

In these examples the audit messages have been reformatted. They appear on a single line in the log file.

Audit Collection Creation and Deletion

Enable auditing when a collection is created or deleted.

db.admin.runCommand(
   {
      setAuditConfig: 1,
      filter:
         {
            atype:
               {
                  $in: [ "createCollection", "dropCollection" ]
               }
         },
      auditAuthorizationSuccess: false
   }
)

When the inventory collection is created in the sales database, the audit system will log a message like this:

{
   "atype" : "createCollection",
   "ts" : { "$date" : "2021-08-09T13:45:05.372+00:00" },
   "uuid" : { "$binary" : "RKU/YLizS6K9se2GUU7ZVQ==", "$type" : "04" },
   "local" : { "ip" : "127.0.0.1", "port" : 27502 },
   "remote" : { "ip" : "127.0.0.1", "port" : 51918 },
   "users" : [],
   "roles" : [],
   "param" : { "ns" : "sales.inventory" },
   "result" : 0
}

When the inventory collection is dropped from the sales database, the audit system will log a message like this:

{
   "atype" : "dropCollection",
   "ts" : { "$date" : "2021-08-09T13:45:00.661+00:00" },
   "uuid" : { "$binary" : "0gle4/pSQli+LUcz43ykag==", "$type" : "04" },
   "local" : { "ip" : "127.0.0.1", "port" : 27502 },
   "remote" : { "ip" : "127.0.0.1", "port" : 51928 },
   "users" : [],
   "roles" : [],
   "param" : { "ns" : "sales.inventory" },
   "result" : 0
}

Audit Document Interactions

Set auditAuthorizationSuccess to true and create a filter which includes actions of interest to audit read and write operations.

db.admin.runCommand(
   {
      setAuditConfig: 1,
      filter:
         {
            atype: "authCheck",
            "param.command":
               {
                  $in: [ "find", "insert", "delete", "update", "findandmodify" ]
               }
         },
      auditAuthorizationSuccess: true
   }
)

Search the inventory collection in the sales database using the find command to create an audit log entry like this one:

{
   "atype" : "authCheck",
   "ts" : { "$date" : "2021-08-09T15:28:10.788+00:00" },
   "uuid" : { "$binary" : "ngwRt5CRTZqgE4TsfleoqQ==", "$type" : "04" },
   "local" : { "ip" : "127.0.0.1", "port" : 27502 },
   "remote" : { "ip" : "127.0.0.1", "port" : 51930 },
   "users" : [],
   "roles" : [],
   "param" : {
      "command" : "find",
      "ns" : "sales.inventory",
      "args" : {
         "find" : "inventory",
         "filter" : { "widget" : 1 },
         "lsid" : { "id" : { "$binary" : "FNWNxiitQ8GHKrHx8eJSbg==", "$type" : "04" } },
         "$clusterTime" : { "clusterTime" : { "$timestamp" : { "t" : 1628521381, "i" : 1 } },
         "signature" : { "hash" : { "$binary" : "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=", "$type" : "00" },
         "keyId" : { "$numberLong" : "0" } } },
         "$db" : "sales"
      }
   },
   "result" : 0
}

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