/sbin/restorecon and hard links

[Stephen Smalley]

On Wed, 2006-02-15 at 10:09 -0500, Stephen Smalley wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-02-15 at 09:50 -0500, Chuck Anderson wrote:
> > Restores from backup.  Until our backup utility supports extended 
> > attributes, we will have to use restorecon  so at least the default 
> > labels are set up properly.
> 
> In the file restoration case, you are re-creating files under /home, so
> they won't be hard links to system files, and presumably the user isn't
> allowed to login while you are restoring his home directory, so he can't
> create any links during that process.
> 
> > Also, assuming we do backup extended attributes, will this problem 
> > still exist when restoring them from backup?
> 
> You won't have to run restorecon in that case, and the restore utility
> presumably would just set the attributes as it creates each file, so
> likely not.   But remember that targeted policy doesn't confine users,
> only specific programs/daemons, so if you are using it, you aren't
> relying on SELinux to counter malicious users at all, so this is no
> different.

By the way, /etc/profile.d/selinux.* already runs restorecon by default
when the user logs in on certain user files and directories to ensure
that they are labeled properly.

-- 
Stephen Smalley
National Security Agency