Disabling local logging with write_logs = no

I am trying to log only to a remote machine so I have set: write_logs = no in my auditd.conf. Unfortunately, when I restart auditd it does not appear to respect my configuration choice. When I run it with 'auditd -f' to keep it in the foreground, it does not write the file and i see : write_logs_parser called with: no in the output. Looking at the source, I see: if (opt_foreground) { config.daemonize = D_FOREGROUND; set_aumessage_mode(MSG_STDERR, DBG_YES); } else { config.daemonize = D_BACKGROUND; set_aumessage_mode(MSG_SYSLOG, DBG_NO); (void) umask( umask( 077 ) | 022 ); } It seems I cannot get messages logged with LOG_DEBUG without running in foreground mode (in which case the bug does not appear to be triggered) or recompiling auditd. I have included the output of auditd -f and also my auditd.conf.