Audit Log How To Guide

Overview

The Audit Log is where Swivel maintains an activity log for users. This article describes how to configure auditing within Swivel and considerations to take when generating reports on audit data. It's possible to configure a schedule for the audit log tidy and the audit log length you wish to retain (in days). For information on producing reports, see Reporting How to guide.

For more information on querying the audit data, see MySQL Queries How To Guide.

Prerequisites

Swivel stores Audit Log information from version 3.4 onwards in the Swivel database.

Default Audit Log settings

By default it should be noted that the default time period that audit logs are kept is 30 days. This is important to note if you wish to generate reports on this information.

Audit Log Tidy

The schedule for audit log tidy, is under Server -> Jobs.

If you set this to "Never" then the audit log would never be cleared. This would mean that the audit table would grow continuously, which might become a problem in the long term, especially where disk space is limited.

Alternatively if you clear this regularly then you should note that any reports you run on this data will only go as far back as the specified audit log length in conjunction with when the audit logs were last tidied.

For information on creating custom Audit log tidy jobs see Schedule

Audit Log Length

Configure the audit log length under Policy -> General. You can set this to be as long as you like, and audit records will be kept for that length of time. Default: 30 days, maximum value: 90 days.

Audit Log Size

The audit log size will depend upon the number of authentications and changes in the user information, as well as the length of data retention. It is possible to query the size of the audit log information depending upon the database type. Increasing the length of time that the audit log retains data will have an impact upon backup size.

Audit Log Size - MySQL

 mysql> select (data_length+index_length)/power(1024,2) tablesize_mb
     -> from information_schema.tables
     -> where table_schema='pinsafe_rep' and table_name='PINSAFEM';

This will show in Mb the amount of audit dta stored in the database.