AA-AUDIT(8)

💅 AA-AUDIT(8) — the AppArmor girlies' field guide

okay so bestie, you're about to meet aa-audit, the AppArmor tool that lives in AppArmor's little section 8 of the manual. Strap in, this one's short and sweet but it's iconic.

✨ NAME ✨

aa-audit — sets an AppArmor security profile to audit mode. that's the whole vibe. 🎀

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

aa-audit <executable> [<executable> ...] [-d /path/to/profiles]
[--no-reload] [-r]

literally just throw your executables at it and it handles the rest 🫶

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

aa-audit is your go-to for setting one or more profiles to audit mode. plural. a whole little squad of profiles if you want. no cap.

so what does audit mode even do? okay so: your security policy is still enforced (it's not a free-for-all, bestie, don't get excited), and all access — both the successes and the failures — gets logged to the system log. it's giving surveillance but make it ✨observability✨. every last yes and no is going in the journal. main character profile energy.

and if you ever want to take it back? the --remove option removes the audit mode for the profile. easy. undramatic. we love a reversible queen 💜

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -d --dir /path/to/profiles — tells it where to look for the AppArmor security profile set. defaults to /etc/apparmor.d, which is where they usually live, so you probs don't gotta touch this unless your setup is quirky 🦋
• --no-reload — do not reload the profile after modifying it. ngl if you pick this you're on your own for the reload, so like... know that going in 🙈
• -r --remove — removes the audit mode for the profile. the undo button. the "nvm" of flags. slay 🔥

💀 BUGS 💀

if you find any bugs, please report them at <https://gitlab.com/apparmor/apparmor/-/issues>. don't suffer in silence bestie, drop that link in the group chat 😭

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

apparmor(7), apparmor.d(5), aa-enforce(1), aa-complain(1), aa-disable(1), aa_change_hat(2), and <https://wiki.apparmor.net>. iykyk, go read them, they're the friends of this page fr fr ⭐

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ok that's the whole page, no cap. now go set some profiles to audit mode and watch that log fill up. obsessed for you 💖

AppArmor 4.1.7 · 2026-05-19 — mwah, that's the version and date, love u, bye 🎀🌸🫶