---
name: "ausyscall"
section: "8"
platform: "linux"
package: "audit"
version: "4.2.1-1"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/ausyscall"
---

# ausyscall(8)

a program that allows mapping syscall names and numbers

## NAME

ausyscall - a program that allows mapping syscall names and numbers

## SYNOPSIS

**ausyscall \[arch\] name \| number \| --dump \| --exact**

## DESCRIPTION

**ausyscall** is a program that prints out the mapping from syscall name to number and reverse for the given arch. The arch can be anything returned by \`uname -m\`. If arch is not given, the program will take a guess based on the running image. Or for convenience, you can pass **b32** or **b64** to use the current arch but a specific ABI. You may give the syscall name or number and it will find the opposite. You can also dump the whole table with the --dump option. By default a syscall name lookup will be a substring match meaning that it will try to match all occurrences of the given name with syscalls. So giving a name of chown will match both fchown and chown as any other syscall with chown in its name. If this behavior is not desired, pass the --exact flag and it will do an exact string match.

The program takes the special arch, **uring,** to denote that you want to specify io\_uring operations. In this case, the arch must be given because it will otherwise detect the underlying hardware.

This program can be used to verify syscall numbers on a biarch platform for rule optimization. For example, suppose you had an auditctl rule:

**-a always, exit -S open -F exit=-EPERM -k fail-open**

If you wanted to verify that both 32 and 64 bit programs would be audited, run "ausyscall i386 open" and then "ausyscall x86\_64 open". (Or use the b32 and b64 option.) Look at the returned numbers. If they are different, you will have to write two auditctl rules to get complete coverage.

```
-a always,exit -F arch=b32 -S open -F exit=-EPERM -k fail-open
-a always,exit -F arch=b64 -S open -F exit=-EPERM -k fail-open
```

For more information about a specific syscall, use the man program and pass the number 2 as an argument to make sure that you get the syscall information rather than a shell script program or glibc function call of the same name. For example, if you wanted to learn about the open syscall, type: man 2 open.

## OPTIONS

- **--dump**

  Print all syscalls for the given arch

- **--exact**

  Instead of doing a partial word match, match the given syscall name exactly.

## SEE ALSO

[**ausearch**(8)](/ausearch/8.md), [**auditctl**(8)](/auditctl/8.md).

## AUTHOR

Steve Grubb