At instance startup, an audit record is generated that details the operating system user starting the instance, the user’s terminal identifier, the date and time stamp, and whether database auditing was enabled or disabled. This information is recorded into the operating system audit trail, because the database audit trail is not available until after startup has successfully completed. Recording the state of database auditing at startup also acts as an auditing flag, inhibiting an administrator from performing unaudited actions by restarting a database withdatabase auditing disabled.