A great article on why to use SeLinux

[Tom Holroyd]

I would also like to take this opportunity to vent about this:

=========
SEE ALSO
       The full documentation for chcon is maintained as a Texinfo
manual. If the info and chcon programs are properly installed at your
site, the command

              info chcon

should give you access to the complete manual.
=========

Guess what? info chcon gives me the man page. So what I am complaining
about is the use of the word "should" in a computer manual, without a
decent try at where to look in case it doesn't.

On Sun, 2008-03-02 at 08:34 -0500, Tom Holroyd wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-03-02 at 13:16 +0000, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> 
> > It isn't important to understand how it works, but what it does. I see regular 
> > woes about selinux here on the list, mostly from people who didn't bother to 
> > read the manuals (myself included for one thread). Just do
> > 
> > man semanage, man chcon, man restorecon
> 
> Those are useful pointers, thanks.
> 
> > and find out that the whole thing behaves just as another layer of file 
> > permissions.
> 
> Some of the rules in selinux concern bad programming habits. It's not
> quite the same as permissions, because there is a choice; when something
> breaks, do I complain to the person who wrote the program? Yes, I
> should, but this doesn't solve the problem, it still doesn't work. Or
> should I chcon or do some other magic that makes the problem go away?
> The problem is still there, though. Yes, I should actually do both of
> these things. Of course, in my environment there is a big firewall
> around the whole place, and my little network doesn't see these threats.
> So it's not quite the same as permissions. It's more, this pile of
> software, which we cannot do without, despite that it was badly written
> ten or fifteen years ago but with good intent, needs to work please,
> now.
> 
> Dr. Tom
> --
> It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to prove oneself right,
> especially when one is right. Only, one must be rich enough to do so.
> Thus spoke Zarathustra.
> 

Dr. Tom
--
Awake and listen, you that are lonely! From the future come winds with
stealthy wings, and to subtle ears good tidings are proclaimed. Thus
spoke Zarathustra.