[comp.os.vms] Interesting use for audits

psw@WOLFGANG.MITRE.ORG (Phil Wherry) (07/21/87)

     I've found an interesting use for the VMS security auditing functions
that I thought I'd pass along -- recent messages about having problems with
file protections reminded me that I should share this littly trick.  If you
are having problems with a product and suspect that it's having problems
accessing some file due to protection problems, try turning on auditing
for file access failures with SET AUDIT/ALARM/ENABLE=FILE:FAIL.  This will
kick off a message on the console when a process encounters a protection
problem.  The message printed will include the name of the file, the name
of the facility requesting access, and the type of access that was
requested and denied.  Though the immediate applicability of this feature
is obviously security-related, I've found it a useful debugging tool as well.
Hope this helps some of you.

Phil Wherry