circular policy references generated by sepolgen

[Miroslav Grepl]

On 01/10/2012 10:59 PM, Michael Atighetchi wrote:
> All,
>
> I have a number of custom policies that I developed on a Fedora 14 
> system by using sepolgen and iterating over the policies up to a point 
> where they are violation free.
>
> When trying to install those policies on another system, I've run into 
> a circular dependency issue. No matter what order I  call the 6 .sh 
> scripts created by sepolgen, I always end up with missing required 
> types, e.g.,:
>
> ----
> [proxyuser at lime selinux]$ sudo ./CZwd.sh
> Building and Loading Policy
> + make -f /usr/share/selinux/devel/Makefile
> make: Nothing to be done for `all'.
> + /usr/sbin/semodule -i CZwd.pp
> libsepol.print_missing_requirements: CZwd's global requirements were 
> not met: type/attribute CZfwa_t (No such file or directory).
> libsemanage.semanage_link_sandbox: Link packages failed (No such file 
> or directory).
> /usr/sbin/semodule:  Failed!
> ----
>
> Presumably, one can break these cycles by defining all required types 
> first.
> Is there a manual way to do this using the SELinux tools?
>
> Thanks
> Michael
>
>
You should use "optional_policy" statement in your policies to prevent 
this issue. I wrote a blog about this

http://mgrepl.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/troubles-with-policy-development-part-1/