selinux and /etc/passwd

[Stephen Smalley]

On Tue, 2004-11-09 at 00:23, Sergiu Giurgiu wrote:
> hi,
> I've just installed FC3 tonight (clean install) and ... I've came across 
> a small problem.
> Users cannot be created. I hev created a user at the first-boot wizard, 
> I have tried to use the graphical tool, and ... at the console I tried 
> to use useradd. The wizard didn't say anything (like everything was ok), 
> the user/group manager graphical tool remain blocked when I pressed OK 
> to add a new user, but useradd said that it cannot alter /etc/passwd  (I 
> don't recall the exact message). As a result, I couldn't add a new user.
> To start eventually working, I have disabled selinux and rebooted. 
> everthing works fine now.
> Given that I'm not quite knowledgeable about selinux (why is it there 
> and what is it doing), and this machine functions as a 
> workstation/desktop machine, I can say that I'm ok with this solution. 
> However I would like to know what was happening. Is it a bug (didn't 
> found reports about this)? It's a feature? Can it be fixed? If so, how?
> The filesystem installed is reiserfs (does it matter?).
> Thank you.

What does 'audit2allow -v -i /var/log/messages' show?  reiserfs doesn't
yet support individual file labeling for SELinux, so all files in it are
mapped to a single security type, but I would have expected you to be
able to access it under the targeted policy just fine.

-- 
Stephen Smalley <sds at epoch.ncsc.mil>
National Security Agency