Tlog

Tlog is a terminal I/O recording and playback package suitable for implementing centralized user session recording.

Whereas most other similar packages write the recorded data to a file in their own format, or upload it to a custom server, tlog sends it to a logging service. Both the standard syslog and the journald interfaces are supported. The recorded data is encoded in JSON in a way which keeps it human-readable and searchable as much as possible.

The primary purpose of logging in JSON format is to eventually deliver the recorded data to a storage service such as Elasticsearch, where it can be searched and queried, and from where it can be played back.

Tlog contains three tools: tlog-rec for recording terminal I/O of programs or shells in general, tlog-rec-session for recording I/O of whole terminal sessions, with protection from recorded users, and tlog-play for playing back the recordings. You can run tlog-rec for testing or recording specific commands or shell sessions for yourself, or you can integrate it into another solution. Tlog-rec-session is intended to be a user's login shell. It puts itself between the actual user's shell and the terminal upon user login, logging everything that passes through. Lastly, tlog-play can playback recordings from Elasticsearch or from a file, made with either tlog-rec or tlog-rec-session. There is no difference in log format between tlog-rec and tlog-rec-session.

Building

Build dependencies are systemd, cURL, json-c, and libutempter, which development packages are systemd-devel, json-c-devel, libcurl-devel, and libutempter-devel on RPM-based distros, and pkg-config, libjson-c-dev, libsystemd-journal-dev/libsystemd-dev, libcurl-*-dev, and libutempter-dev on Debian-based distros.

To build from Git you'll need autoconf, automake and libtool packages. For creating RPM package rpm-build is also required.

If Systemd Journal support is not required, it can be disabled with configure's --disable-journal option, removing the systemd dependency as well.

Updating the system utmp and wtmp files can be enabled with the --enable-utempter configure option, utilizing the libutempter library.

If you'd like to build tlog from the Git source tree, you need to first generate the build system files:

autoreconf -i -f

After that, or if you're building a release source tarball, you need to follow the usual configure & make approach:

./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var && make

To generate a source tarball:

./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc && make dist

From a source tarball you can build an SRPM package:

rpmbuild -ts <tarball>

Or an RPM package:

rpmbuild -tb <tarball>

Installing

You can use one of the release binary RPM packages and install them with your favorite tool. The RPM package does all the necessary setup for you.

Otherwise, if you built tlog from source, you can install it with the usual make install:

sudo make install

If you are recording other user sessions, and don't want them to be able to affect the recording process, make sure you use tlog-rec-session and its executable is SUID/SGID to separate and dedicated user and group. It doesn't require running as root and will be safer with a regular, dedicated user.

You will also need to create the session lock directory /var/run/tlog and make it writable (only) for the user(s) tlog-rec-session runs as. On systems where (/var)/run is a tmpfs you will also need to make sure the session lock directory is recreated on the next boot. In that case, on systems with systemd you'll need to create a tmpfiles.d configuration file, and on init.d systems - a startup script, creating the directory for you.

Testing

You can test if session recording and playback work in general with a freshly installed tlog, by recording a session into a file with tlog-rec and then playing it back with tlog-play.

Usage

Recording to a file

To record into a file, execute tlog-rec on the command line as such:

tlog-rec --writer=file --file-path=tlog.log

Playing back from a file

Both during, and after the recording you can play the session back with tlog-play:

tlog-play --reader=file --file-path=tlog.log

Recording to Systemd Journal

To record into the Systemd Journal, execute tlog-rec as such:

tlog-rec --writer=journal

Along with the regular JSON log messages, when recording to Journal, tlog copies a few JSON fields to Journal fields (unless explicitly disabled) to aid searching and extracting (parts of) particular recordings:

• TLOG_USER - the user the recording was started as (user in JSON),
• TLOG_SESSION - the audit session ID of the recording process (session in JSON),
• TLOG_REC - host-unique recording ID (rec in JSON),
• TLOG_ID - log message ID within the recording (id in JSON).

Playing back from Systemd Journal

In general, selecting Journal log entries for playback is done using Journal matches and timestamp limits, with -M/--journal-match, -S/--journal-since, and -U/--journal-until options.

In practice however, playback from Journal is usually done with a single match against the TLOG_REC Journal field. The TLOG_REC field contains a copy of the rec field from the logged JSON data, which is a host-unique ID of the recording. For example, to playback a recording which contains this message (output with journalctl -o verbose and abbreviated):

Mon 2018-01-22 10:51:48.463904 EET [s=87ea0a3f655a48cd80d7f49053860806;...
    _AUDIT_LOGINUID=1000
    _UID=1000
    _GID=1000
    _AUDIT_SESSION=2
    _BOOT_ID=12ca5b356065453fb50adfe57007658a
    _MACHINE_ID=2d8d017e2b1144cbbdd049a8a997911b
    _HOSTNAME=bard
    PRIORITY=6
    _TRANSPORT=journal
    _SYSTEMD_OWNER_UID=1000
    TLOG_REC=12ca5b356065453fb50adfe57007658a-306a-26f2910
    TLOG_USER=nkondras
    TLOG_SESSION=2
    TLOG_ID=1
    MESSAGE={"ver":"2.3","host":"bard","rec":"12ca5b356065453fb50adfe57007658a-306a-26f2910",...
    SYSLOG_IDENTIFIER=tlog-rec
    _PID=12394
    _COMM=tlog-rec
    _SOURCE_REALTIME_TIMESTAMP=1516611108463904

you can take the ID either from the TLOG_REC field value directly, or from the MESSAGE field (from the JSON rec field). You can then playback the whole recording like this:

tlog-play -r journal -M TLOG_REC=12ca5b356065453fb50adfe57007658a-306a-26f2910

When compiled with Systemd >= 245 it is possible to read log entries from a specific Journal namespace using parameters -N/--journal-namespace.

Playing back ongoing recordings

By default, once tlog-play reaches the last message a recording has so far, it exits. However, it can be made to poll for new messages appearing with the -f/--follow option, which is useful for playing back ongoing recordings.

Playback controls

Tlog-play accepts several command-line options affecting playback, including -s/--speed for setting playback speed multiplier, -g/--goto for specifying the location the playback should be fast-forwarded to, and -p/--paused for starting playback in paused state.

Several control keys are also recognized during playback:

• SPACE or p for pause/resume,
• { and } for halving and doubling the playback speed,
• . for stepping through the recording (on pause or during playback)
• G for fast-forwarding to the end of the recording (useful with --follow), or to the specified timestamp (see tlog-play(8) for details),
• and q for quitting playback.

Rate-limiting recording

Both tlog-rec and tlog-rec-session can be setup to limit the rate at which recording's messages are logged. Tlog-rec accepts three options: --limit-rate=NUMBER, --limit-burst=NUMBER, and --limit-action=STRING, which specify rate limit in bytes per second, burst limit in bytes, and the limit action (pass/delay/drop), respectively. The same parameters can be changed using limit.rate, limit.burst, and limit.action configuration parameters for both tlog-rec and tlog-rec-session.

The default pass limit action lets all the messages through unhindered, effectively disabling rate-limiting. You can throttle logging, and slow down the user's terminal I/O using the delay limit action. Finally, you can simply drop the captured I/O, going above the rate and burst limits, using the drop action. See tlog-rec(8), tlog-rec.conf(5), and tlog-rec-session.conf(5) for details.

Playing back partial recordings

By default tlog-play will terminate playback, if it notices out-of-order or missing log messages. However, it is possible to make it ignore missing messages with the --lax option for when you need to playback a partial or a corrupted recording.

Recording sessions of a user

Change the shell of the user to be recorded to tlog-rec-session:

sudo usermod -s /usr/bin/tlog-rec-session <user>

Login as the user on a text terminal. By default the recorded terminal data will be delivered to Journal (if tlog was built with Journal support) or to syslog with facility "authpriv". In both cases default priority will be "info". It will appear in Journal, if you use journald, or in /var/log/auth.log on Debian-based systems, and in /var/log/secure on Fedora and derived systems.

Customize tlog-rec-session configuration in /etc/tlog/tlog-rec-session.conf as necessary (see tlog-rec-session.conf(5) for details).

Locale configuration issue on Fedora and RHEL

Fedora and RHEL (and some other distros) use an approach for configuring system locale, where the login shell is responsible for reading the locale configuration from a file (/etc/locale.conf) itself, instead of receiving it through the environment variables as most programs do. Since su clears environment when asked for imitation of a login shell (su -, or su -l), the shell can only retrieve locale configuration from that file, in that case, on these distros.

Because tlog-rec-session is not an actual shell and cannot read /etc/locale.conf file itself, it will use libc routines to read the environment, which will fall back to ANSI_X3.4-1968 (ASCII) in these cases. Since nowadays pure ASCII is rarely used, tlog-rec-session assumes that locale environment was lost, assumes the actual encoding is UTF-8, and prints a warning.

To work that around, you can implement the approach Debian and derived distros use. I.e. use PAM's pam_env.so module to read and set the locale environment variables before shell or tlog-rec-session starts. To accomplish that on Fedora or RHEL, put this into the /etc/pam.d/system-auth file, along with all other session lines:

session     required      pam_env.so readenv=1 envfile=/etc/locale.conf

However, tlog only supports UTF-8 so far, so the above workaround only serves to silent the fallback warning.

Configuring shell per-user using symlinks

You can create a symlink to tlog-rec-sessions containing the shell it should start, in its name. E.g. if you create a symlink like this:

sudo ln -s tlog-rec-session /usr/bin/tlog-rec-session-shell-bin-zsh

and execute tlog-rec-session-shell-bin-zsh, then tlog-rec-session will start and execute /bin/zsh as the shell to record. See tlog-rec-session(8) for details.

Such symlinks can then be assigned as login shells to certain users to have a specific shell started for them, under recording.

Configuring recording in SSSD

SSSD starting with v1.16.0 allows configuring which users and/or groups should be recorded (have tlog-rec-session started when they login), while also preserving the original user shell. See sssd-session-recording(5).

Recording sessions to Elasticsearch

Rsyslog can be set up to deliver tlog messages to Elasticsearch. First of all, increase the maximum message size to be 1k more than the tlog-rec-session payload. The default payload is 2kB, so the rsyslog maximum message size needs to be "3k" if the defaults are used:

$MaxMessageSize 3k

The line above needs to be above any network setup in rsyslog.conf (put it at the top to be safe).

Then the Elasticsearch output module needs to be loaded:

$ModLoad omelasticsearch

Massaging JSON

Before sending tlog messages to Elasticsearch they need to be reformatted and real time timestamp needs to be added, which can be done with this rsyslog template:

template(name="tlog" type="list") {
    constant(value="{")
    property(name="timegenerated"
             outname="timestamp"
             format="jsonf"
             dateFormat="rfc3339")
    constant(value=",")
    property(name="msg"
             regex.expression="{\\(.*\\)"
             regex.submatch="1")
    constant(value="\n")
}

Filtering out tlog messages

Then, a rule routing messages originating from tlog to Elasticsearch needs to be added. If you installed v4 or later tlog RPM package, or set up tlog-rec-session as SUID/SGID to a dedicated user yourself, then the rule can use that user ID to filter genuine tlog messages securely.

If your rsyslog receives messages from journald, with the imjournal module, then the rule condition should be:

if $!_UID == "<TLOG_UID>" then {
    # ... actions ...
}

Note that the above would only work with rsyslog v8.17.0 and later, due to an issue preventing it from parsing variable names starting with underscore.

If your rsyslog receives messages via syslog(1) socket by itself, with the imuxsock module, you need to enable the module's Annotate and ParseTrusted options. E.g. like this:

module(load="imuxsock" SysSock.Annotate="on" SysSock.ParseTrusted="on")

And then the rule condition should be:

if $!uid == "<TLOG_UID>" then {
    # ... actions ...
}

The <TLOG_UID> above should be replaced with the UID your tlog-rec-session runs as.

Otherwise you'll need to filter by something else. For example the program name (ident argument to syslog(3)), which tlog specifies as tlog. In that case the condition could be:

if $programname == "tlog-rec-session" then {
    # ... actions ...
}

However, note that any program is able to log with that program name and thus spoof tlog messages.

Sending the messages

Once your rule condition is established, you can add the actual action sending the messages to Elasticsearch:

action(name="tlog-elasticsearch"
       type="omelasticsearch"
       server="localhost"
       searchIndex="tlog-rsyslog"
       searchType="tlog"
       bulkmode="on"
       template="tlog")

The action above would send messages formatted with the tlog template, described above, to an Elasticsearch server running on localhost and default port, and would put them into index tlog-rsyslog with type tlog, using the bulk interface.

Add the following action if you want to also send tlog messages to a dedicated file for debugging:

action(name="tlog-file"
       type="omfile"
       file="/var/log/tlog.log"
       fileCreateMode="0600"
       template="tlog")

Further, if you don't want tlog messages delivered anywhere else you can add the discard action (~) after both of those:

~

If you'd like to exclude tlog messages from any other logs remember to put its rule before any other rules in rsyslog.conf.

Here is a complete example of a rule matching messages arriving from tlog-rec-session running as user with UID 123, delivered from journald. It sends them to Elasticsearch running on localhost with default port, puts them into tlog-rsyslog index with type tlog, using bulk interface, stores them in /var/log/tlog.log file, and then stops processing, not letting them get anywhere else.

if $!_UID == "123" then {
	action(name="tlog-elasticsearch"
		   type="omelasticsearch"
		   server="localhost"
		   searchIndex="tlog-rsyslog"
		   searchType="tlog"
		   bulkmode="on"
		   template="tlog")
	action(name="tlog-file"
		   type="omfile"
		   file="/var/log/tlog.log"
		   fileCreateMode="0600"
		   template="tlog")
	~
}

Playing back from Elasticsearch

Once you got tlog messages to Elasticsearch, you can play them back using the still rudimentary tlog-play command-line tool. You will need to tell it to use the Elasticsearch reader (es), supply it with the Elasticsearch base URL, and the query string, which would match the messages for your session.

The base URL should point to the _search endpoint for your type and index. E.g. a base URL for index tlog-rsyslog and type tlog on localhost would be:

http://localhost:9200/tlog-rsyslog/tlog/_search

The query string should follow the Elasticsearch query string syntax. E.g. to look for session #17 which happened in the last week on host server, you can use this query string:

host:server AND timestamp:>=now-7d AND session:17

Use --reader (or just -r), --es-baseurl and --es-query options to specify the reader, base URL, and the query string respectively. The full command for the above parameters could look like this:

tlog-play -r es \
          --es-baseurl=http://localhost:9200/tlog-rsyslog/tlog/_search \
          --es-query='host:server AND timestamp:>=now-7d AND session:17'

If you're playing back an ongoing session, adding the --follow or -f option will make tlog-play wait for more messages after it plays back all that were logged so far. Just like tail -f will wait for more lines to be added to a file it's outputting.

Interrupt tlog-play (e.g. press Ctrl-C) to stop the playback at any moment.

Instead of specifying the reader and the base URL on the command line every time, you can put them in /etc/tlog/tlog-play.conf configuration file.

Limitations

Currently tlog-play functionality is limited. It doesn't provide a way to rewind playback, only to fast-forward. It polls files, Journal and Elasticsearch for new messages, instead of asking to be updated when they appear, which impairs performance. Even though the messages contain recorded terminal window (re)sizes, it doesn't resize its own terminal to fit the output better. Further development will be addressing these.

Contributing

Please read the Contributing Guidelines for more details on the process for submitting pull requests.