AUDIT changes - true sense of security

Hello all, I do work that requires me to configure auditing on my systems. I am a relative novice to the audit configurations in most operating systems. I have an issue, I believe, and I am asking for help on how to properly address/assess it. I have been given guidance in support of auditing on CentOS-6.x systems: 1. To place various watch (-w) and action (-a) rules into place. 2. Make certain the configurations are immutable. Sometimes I have to add more rules, so I do that. However, I am not certain if the rules are working properly, and I do know that I have broken the auditd init-scripts on my systems a few times, and just commented out the offending audit controls to work around/fix this very type of problem. What I need to know is, since the configurations have to be immutable ( with the -e 2) how can I properly start the audit service, and without any inkling of a doubt be certain that the rules are in place and are functioning properly? Also, being a total novice, how can I test/trigger audit log actions on watch and action rules to see that the rules are configured properly? Finally, is there a tool that will do a sanity check on the audit.rules file? Or is the only option to attempt to restart the auditd service, and think "It started, it worked!" is acceptable? I just don't want a false sense of security, I also don't want a nagging sense of paranoia. Thank you, Warron French, MBA, SCSA The Aerospace Corporation