Generally I am a "belt and suspenders" type of guy with respect to security so for a webserver (apache(httpd), lighttpd, or nginx) I want to run the server chrooted AS WELL AS have SELinux enforcing in effect. I have been running SELinux enabled and enforcing from the beginning so it is not a question of using SELinux.

Well, I am not doing to well and really cannot get things to work.  Without chroot but with SELinux enforcing, I can get lighttpd to serve static files and CPI created info (specifically to support git clone and gitweb).  With chroot and SELInux enforcing I can get static files served but not CGI stuff ...
    I get lots of "CGI failed: Permission denied cgi-bin/git-http-backend"

A bunch of years ago when I was using the bind package for dns, there was a change in Fedora/RHEL to de-emphasize use of chroot and instead depend on SELinux to protect things.  This change was not so much advertised and just done.

I am wondering if something similar has happened for the webserver.  There is some (very limited) doc for apache (httpd) and a lot of rules in selinux-policy-targetted for "httpd" and these rules seem to apply to both httpd (apache) and lighttpd.  If I am reading the tea leaves correctly SELinux seems to be providing a lot of protection.

So, do I need chroot???  Is just using SELinux a "good enough" solution?  I am not looking for a perfect solution but one which "good engineering practice" says should be "good enough."  I hope it is but would sure like some "experts" to agree as well as maybe pointing to some substantiating documentation.

Side comment:  If SELinux is attempting to provide the same functionality to both httpd and lighttpd, it would be nice if the documentation at least mentioned lighttpd.

Gene

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