SElinux concerning symlink?

Mike mike.cloaked at gmail.com
Wed Jul 23 21:36:09 UTC 2008


I have just done a clean f9 install on a laptop where the user areas are
on a separate partition (/opt/Local/home) on the HD.

Having left SELinux on after the install I did my usual post-install
change of doing as root:
cd /
mv home home.dist
ln -s /opt/Local/home .

Now /home is a symlink to /opt/Local/home

I can now login as a normal user..... BUT

If I now ssh into the machine from another machine on the network
I find that I cannot get the home directory for that user!

The message is:
Last login: Wed Jul 23 21:32:14 2008 from bla.bla.com
Could not chdir to home directory /home/username: Permission denied
[username at localhost /]$

I am presuming that this is an SELinux denial... even though it
does not say so explicitely.

I have read that there are difficulties with symlinks in SELinux
and I wondered if someone who has been through this could advise?

I have heard that replacing a symlink with a bind mount will make
an improvement - 

i.e. make a new directory /home and then bind mount it from
/opt/Local/home

Presumably this would need an entry in fstab to make it work at boot?
If so what is the appropriate fstab line?

Thanks in advance.




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