Title

The netconsole service must be disabled unless required. (Cat III impact)

Discussion

The "netconsole" service is not necessary unless there is a need to debug kernel panics, which is not common.

Check Content

To check that the "netconsole" service is disabled in system boot configuration, run the following command: # chkconfig "netconsole" --list Output should indicate the "netconsole" service has either not been installed, or has been disabled at all runlevels, as shown in the example below: # chkconfig "netconsole" --list "netconsole" 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:off 4:off 5:off 6:off Run the following command to verify "netconsole" is disabled through current runtime configuration: # service netconsole status If the service is disabled the command will return the following output: netconsole is stopped If the service is running, this is a finding.

Fix Text

The "netconsole" service is responsible for loading the netconsole kernel module, which logs kernel printk messages over UDP to a syslog server. This allows debugging of problems where disk logging fails and serial consoles are impractical. The "netconsole" service can be disabled with the following commands: # chkconfig netconsole off # service netconsole stop

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-218039r603264_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-218039

Group Title: SRG-OS-000096

Expert Comments

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