auditd is stopped and won't start
 

When I try to start auditd it just says failed. I can't force start it either. I'm not sure what information is needed to troubleshoot, but I will provide it when asked. I am using CentOS 6.

I'm also fairly new to Linux.

Please read the "Question Guidelines" and "How to ask a smart question" links in my posting signature.

When asking any question, details are needed. All we know is you're using CentOS 6, and the only thing we know about your audit service is that it says "failed". You don't tell us if this was ever working, (if so, then what changed?), what you've done/tried, or even where you got that 'failed' message. There are too many variables for anyone to guess. CentOS is almost identical to Red Hat Enterprise, and there are MANY how-to guides for configuring auditd:
https://www.centos.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=30858
http://linux-audit.com/configuring-a...-audit-daemon/
https://access.redhat.com/documentat...t_service.html

...but we don't know if this is a new configuration, or if you tried to modify an existing one. There are log files you can check, and you can also try to run the daemon in the foreground to see what messages it returns.