# How to configure Auditbeat to panic the kernel if auditing fails

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-configure-auditbeat-to-panic-the-kernel-if-auditing-fails/263919>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Tags:** auditbeat\
**Created:** [February 10, 2021, 6:34pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-configure-auditbeat-to-panic-the-kernel-if-auditing-fails/263919 "2021-02-10T18:34:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![RLPowellJr](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/rlpowelljr/32/97049_2.png) [@RLPowellJr](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/RLPowellJr)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2021, 6:34pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-configure-auditbeat-to-panic-the-kernel-if-auditing-fails/263919/1 "2021-02-10T18:34:30Z")

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Greetings all!

We have a small Elastic Stack used for security-relevant event collection in a standalone Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 & 7.6 modeling & simulation enclave. The Stack is just four Elasticsearch nodes, a Kibana node, and a Logstash node (everything version 7.3). Events are collected from enclave systems by Auditbeat and shipped to Logstash.

We have a requirement to, if at all possible, configure systems to halt if they are unable to log auditable events, or in this case send those events to a central auditing system (our Elastic Stack). I was thinking configuring a test machine's (RHEL 7.6) Auditbeat's auditd module with "failure\_mode: panic" would do so, but I turned off Logstash yesterday afternoon and my test box is still running. I believe the relevant lines from my auditbeat.yml are:

```auto
auditbeat.modules:
- module: auditd
   failure_mode: panic
   backlog_limit: 2
   backpressure_strategy: none

```

The backlog\_limit is ridiculously low because I'm deliberately trying to trigger a kernel panic to test, but as noted above so far that hasn't happened. My questions, then:

1. Can I actually configure Auditbeat 7.3 to panic a RHEL 7.6 kernel and halt the system?

2. If so, am I on the right track with the configuration settings noted above, or am I missing something?

Bob

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2021, 8:34pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-configure-auditbeat-to-panic-the-kernel-if-auditing-fails/263919/2 "2021-03-10T20:34:52Z")

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