# Start an Audit Trail

This procedure describes how to start the audit trail that creates a record of users logged in at a Web Console.

Note: Only the system superuser (root) can perform this procedure.

To start an audit trail:

1. In the navigation tree, click Report Generation > Start Audit Trail.
   The Start Audit Trail page displays.

2. Enter a number from 1 to 999999 as the Maximum Audit Trail Entries to record. If you leave the current number of trail entries set to 0, the audit trail will remain empty even after being started.

Note: The system issues a warning in the error log when the number of entries reaches 85%, 90% and 95% of the maximum. To ensure that this process functions properly, enter values in multiples of 100 (in other words, enter 200 or 2000, but do not enter 201 or 2222).

3. To start the audit trail, click Start.

The audit trail starts and continues running until it has recorded the number of events you specified or the system capacity is exceeded. If there is a capacity problem, a series of alarms are issued until the capacity limit is reached, at which time older audit trail entries will be overwritten.

Note: Once you have started an audit trail, you cannot stop it. However, when you Export an Audit Trail all data is deleted, enabling you to start a new audit trail.