Handling labeling on filesystems that don't support SELinux

Daniel J Walsh dwalsh at redhat.com
Mon Nov 17 14:45:21 UTC 2008


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Sean E. Millichamp wrote:
> I have been working on SELinux support for Puppet.  One issue that has
> cropped up is the behavior on filesystems which don't support SELinux.
> 
> They all appear to get a default label, some seem to allow changing the
> label (VFAT) in a non-persistent manner, some seem to throw "not
> supported" errors (NFS).
> 
> How can I detect if a file is on a filesystem which supports SELinux
> without trying to update the label?
> 
> The best idea so far as been to parse /proc/mounts and use that to
> determine what type of filesystem a file lives on, then check it against
> a whitelist (which would include ext3, xfs, ?) but it seems like there
> has to be a cleaner/simpler way.
> 
> What I would like would be a "getfilecon" call that returns the real
> label, ignoring any mount-time defaults.
> 
> Any ideas?
> 
> Thanks,
> Sean
> 
> 
> --
> fedora-selinux-list mailing list
> fedora-selinux-list at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-selinux-list
I have been waiting for some one else to respond to this.  I think this
would be better sent to the nsa selinux list for better discussion.

The problem with your parsing of the /proc/mounts is that it would not
give you an accurate idea of what supports and what does not support
SELinux labeling.  Also this can change over time.

If I mount an ext3 file system with a context mount, then it will no
longer allow you to set the file context.  I think the best idea is just
attempt to assign the context and if it fails, ignore the error.  I
guess you can report it, if in verbose mode as a warning.

Others may have different ideas.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iEYEARECAAYFAkkhg4EACgkQrlYvE4MpobMPMgCgm+G/Pyrll2CKHUynWftA7Shq
phMAnAwTXQQ+mQH33EjP20o9iM7gaVvE
=eDjj
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----




More information about the fedora-selinux-list mailing list