dump/restore and SElinux security context problem

[A.J. Bonnema]

Kayvan A. Sylvan wrote:
> Hi everyone.
>
> I was trying to upgrade from FC4 to FC5, but my root partition was too small
> to accomodate the DVD image. So, I had to resize some partitions. GNU parted
> was useless in that task (see Redhat Bugzilla Bug 90894).
>
> Finally, I used "dump" to create a snapshot of a filesystem, then, using
> the FC5 DVD to boot into rescue mode, used "restore" to recreate it.
>
> The problem: during the restore, for every file, I get messages like this:
>
>     restore: lsetxattr ./System.map-2.6.15-1.1833_FC4 failed: Invalid argument
>
> This feels like it's related to SELinux. In fact, looking at
> the restored files with "ls -Z", I see that they are all unlabeled.
>
> If I don't use the rescue CD, and instead, on a running system where SELinux
> is enabled, do the following:
>
> 1) setenforce 0
> 2) restore from the dump.
> 3) setenforce 1
>
> Then, the restored files are in their correct security context.
>
> How do I get this same result (files completely restored, along with
> their extended attributes) while using the rescue CD?
>
>   
Hi Kayvan,

Interesting problem. Why is it important that you use the rescue CD?
Why can't you just do a fresh install of FC5 and then do a restore?
> My end goal is to be able to do a dump, boot into a rescue mode,
> resize partitions, format new filesystems and restore the dump, and have
> all files retain all their attributes (including their SELinux context
> information).
>   
If you use the install procedure, can't you resize partitions and format 
new filesystems and then, from the running FC5-system do a restore?

Guus.

-- 
A.J. Bonnema, Leiden The Netherlands,
user #328198 (Linux Counter http://counter.li.org)