Chapter 5. Working with SELinux The following sections give a brief overview of the main SELinux packages in Red Hat Enterprise Linux; installing and updating packages; which log files are used; the main SELinux configuration file; enabling and disabling SELinux; SELinux modes; configuring Booleans; temporarily and persistently changing file and directory labels; overriding file system labels with the mount command; mounting NFS volumes; and how to preserve SELinux contexts when copying and archiving files and directories. 5.1. SELinux Packages In Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the SELinux packages are installed by default, in a full installation, unless they are manually excluded during installation. If performing a minimal installation in text mode, the policycoreutils-python and the policycoreutils-gui package are not installed by default. Also, by default, SELinux targeted policy is used, and SELinux runs in enforcing mode. The following is a brief description of the SELinux packages that are installed on your system by default: policycoreutils provides utilities such as restorecon , secon , setfiles , semodule , load_policy , and setsebool , for operating and managing SELinux. selinux-policy provides the SELinux Reference Policy. The SELinux Reference Policy is a complete SELinux policy, and is used as a basis for other policies, such as the SELinux targeted policy; refer to the Tresys Technology SELinux Reference Policy page for further information. This package also provides the /usr/share/selinux/devel/policygentool development utility, as well as example policy files. selinux-policy-targeted provides the SELinux targeted policy. libselinux - provides an API for SELinux applications. libselinux-utils provides the avcstat , getenforce , getsebool , matchpathcon , selinuxconlist , selinuxdefcon , selinuxenabled , setenforce , and togglesebool utilities. libselinux-python provides Python bindings for developing SELinux applications. The following is a brief description of the main optional packages, which have to be installed via the yum install <package-name> command: selinux-policy-mls provides the MLS SELinux policy. setroubleshoot-server translates denial messages, produced when access is denied by SELinux, into detailed descriptions that are viewed with the sealert utility, also provided by this package. setools-console - this package provides the Tresys Technology SETools distribution , a number of tools and libraries for analyzing and querying policy, audit log monitoring and reporting, and file context management [6] . The setools package is a meta-package for SETools. The setools-gui package provides the apol , seaudit , and sediffx tools. The setools-console package provides the seaudit-report , sechecker , sediff , seinfo , sesearch , findcon , replcon , and indexcon command-line tools. Refer to the Tresys Technology SETools page for information about these tools. mcstrans translates levels, such as s0-s0:c0.c1023 , to an easier to read form, such as SystemLow-SystemHigh . This package is not installed by default. policycoreutils-python provides utilities such as semanage , audit2allow , audit2why , and chcat , for operating and managing SELinux. policycoreutils-gui provides system-config-selinux , a graphical tool for managing SELinux. [6] Brindle, Joshua. "Re: blurb for fedora setools packages" Email to Murray McAllister. 1 November 2008. Any edits or changes in this version were done by Murray McAllister.

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