Cargo Cult sysadmining

[jdow]

On 2012/08/06 13:40, Ian Malone wrote:
> On 6 August 2012 21:06, Joe Zeff <joe at zeff.us> wrote:
>
>>
>> It looks like I may have created a new use of Cargo Cult, based on Cargo
>> Cult Programming.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming,
>> http://foldoc.org/cargo+cult)  My thought was that disabling SELinux as a
>> first step in troubleshooting any and every problem, even when there's no
>> evidence that it's involved was equivalent to natives in New Guinea creating
>> mockups of landing strips after WWII thinking that planes filled with cargo
>> would land there.  Most of your suggestions, although bad ideas in and of
>> themselves, don't have this (to me) important quality: IMO, to be considered
>> cargo cult sysadminning, the practice must either have nothing to do with
>> the problem it's intended to fix (Disabling your firewall because sshd
>> doesn't start.) or is no longer relevant, such as most instances of
>> reflexive disabling of SELinux. YMMV, and probably does, but I did think
>> that I should put my original meaning for the term on the record.
>>
>
> Well, the thing is that SELinux often has effects that aren't
> particularly obvious. After upgrading to F15 I found I couldn't log in
> without disabling SELinux. At that point you can either try and fix
> the problem or ignore it and carry on with SELinux disabled forever,
> in doing the latter you haven't understood what's wrong or what other
> problems might be involved.

SELinux permissive mode is a better diagnostic than simply turning it off,
too.

{o.o}