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Chef InSpec Audit Log

This page documents Chef InSpec’s audit log. This is a preview feature starting in Chef InSpec 6.

The Chef InSpec audit log uses the Train library to capture activity between the scanning workstation and the scanned target environment.

The InSpec audit log captures the following event types:

  • command events
  • file use events

Audit log limitations

The audit log has the following limitations:

  • no support for API activity capture
  • limited support for file operations: while file access is captured, specific operations may not be
  • inconsistent and opt-in support across Train transports
  • limited support for Test Kitchen

Enable audit logging

The audit log is a preview feature in Chef InSpec 6.

Enable the audit logging by setting an environment variable, CHEF_PREVIEW_AUDIT_LOGGING to any non-empty value. The next time you run inspec exec or inspec shell, InSpec will create a log file at ~/.inspec/logs/inspec-audit-TIMESTAMP-PID.log.

Configure the audit log

The following options are available inside inspec exec and inspec shell to configure Chef InSpec’s audit log.

--audit-log-location=AUDIT_LOG_LOCATION
The directory that the audit log saves diagnostic log files to.

Default: ~/.inspec/logs.

InSpec creates log files in the set directory using the following format: inspec-audit-TIMESTAMP-PID.log.

More information

For details of the audit log format and implementation, refer to the Train documentation.

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