F7: SELinux feature or bug?

[Jim Cornette]

Daniel J Walsh wrote:
> Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
>> Jeroen Lankheet wrote:
>>  
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I think I've been stupid or framed or both. I wanted to samba share a
>>> USB disk on a F7 system but got an SELinux message saying that the
>>> directory could not be shared, and that there was a command to get it
>>> right (=wrong?).
>>> So I typed in
>>>
>>> chcon -t samba_share_t -R /
>>>
>>> Yes, that's what was in the SElinux message thingie as suggestion. And
>>> being a total SELinux nitwit I did what the almighty Linux system 
>>> adviced.
>>> So it took a while before getting "operation not permitted" on /dev/....
>>> Then I cancelled the operation but the damage has apparently already
>>> been made.
>>> I retyped the command with the proper directory to share and now the
>>> share worked.
>>> But when I restarted the system all kinds of services were broken
>>> including /dev/eth0.
>>> The kernel could not find the eth0 device. The X configuration was gone
>>> and all kinds of errors were smashed into my face.
>>> So it looks like the SELinux (or me myself?) has scrambled my harddisk.
>>> I cannot even login anymore. The system is completely dead.
>>> Some 'simple' questions:
>>> Why did this go wrong?
>>> What actually did go wrong?
>>> What to do next? Re-install? That would be a bummer.
>>>
>>> Thanks for the help.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Jeroen.
>>>
>>>     
>> From man selinux:
>>
>> The  best  way  to  relabel the file system is to create the flag
>> file /.autorelabel and reboot. system-config-securitylevel, also has
>> this capability.  The restorcon/fixfiles commands are also available
>> for relabeling files.
>>
>> As root, you will want to run something like: (This will reboot the
>> system when you enter the command, so make sure you are ready to
>> reboot!):
>>
>> touch /.autorelabel ; reboot
>> or
>> touch /.autorelabel ; shutdown -r now
>>
>> You could also just do the "touch /.autorelabel" and then reboot
>> using the GUI option to reboot the system.
>>
>> Mikkel
>>   
> This is the safest way to relabel since no processes are running when 
> this happens. This causes the init script to run fixfiles relabel before 
> it starts anything.  If processes are
> already running, they could be running in the wrong context and creating 
> files with the wrong
> context until they are restarted.

Does this method clear out the /tmp directory when run? I usually clear 
the /tmp directory when I run fixfiles relabel from runlevel 1.

Since the same program is run during the boot autorelabel, I guess I can 
stop dropping to runlevel 1 to run the program. Thanks for the info 
about processes writing the wrong context until the restart.

Jim