[Aide] Naming of attribute groups in aide.conf

[Marc Haber]

Hi,

I have been using aide for more than 20 years now, and for almost as
long, I maintain the aide rules that come with the Debian package.

In the package, we traditionally used attribute group names describing
the attributes, like, for example:

Checksums = H
OwnerMode = p+u+g+ftype
Size = s+b
InodeData = OwnerMode+n+i+Size+l+X
RamdiskData = InodeData-i
VarTime = InodeData+Checksums
VarInode = VarTime-i
VarDir = OwnerMode+n+i+X
VarDirInode = OwnerMode+n+X

Many of those names that have been in used for decades are misnomers. I
think this could be easier to understand with a new naming scheme.

I think it might be better if our attribute group names would actually
describe what a file is being used for, like we have in part for log
files already:

Log = OwnerMode+n+S+X
LowLog = Log-S
SerMemberLog  = Full+I
LoSerMemberLog = SerMemberLog+ANF
HiSerMemberLog = SerMemberLog+ARF

What kind of things do we need to find rules for?

I have come up with the following

RandomAccessDataFile, StateFile - a file that changes contents and mtime
randomly during normal operation of the system, such as an sqlite data
file, a virus pattern file, an apt Packages file, or an aide database
file

GrowingDataFile (alias: Log) - a file that grows, and once written, the
beginning of the file never changes. aide does not have a way to express
this yet, so this would probably start off as being an alias for
RandomAccessDataFile

TransientDataFile, TemporaryDataFile, PidFile, LockFile - a file that
appears and vanishes as necessary, and changes it contents during its
existence.

AppearingDataFile - a file that appears, but once present, does not
change contents.

TransientMarkerFile - a file that appears and vanishes as
necessary, but if present, does not change contents.

GeneratedConfigFile - a file that gets recreated every time the system
boots or a service is restarted, but does not change contents (Compiled
and generated configuration in /run).

DataDir - A directory that contain a fixed number of files, but the
files in the directory change

ChangingDataDir - A directory that contains an ever changing number of
files

RunDir - A directory in /run that gets recreated every time the system
boots

What did I miss? I'd like to hear your input.

Greetings
Marc

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