I have learned a lot about SELinux in the past week. It turns out
the simple fix is to just turn it off. But it is possible I have learned
to live with SELinux turned full on and what to do if there is trouble.
This all started when I had to turn on SELinux to use a device, so I
did and there was no problem. So I left it turned on. Then one morning I
turned on my computer and instead of booting clear up in just one
minute, it stopped when init tried to turn on "cups". It stayed there
for 10 minutes! My thoughts were, how did I screw up the file system so
bad? So turned off the boot and booted up in the rescue mode from a CD,
and did #fsck /dev/sdb5 and it said there is nothing wrong.
So booted up again and took a long walk. When I got back it had
booted clear up but not everything worked. Here now is where I panicked
because it was up but not well, and I knew nothing to do to fix my
computer, and could not even send an email. So I left it "up" and went
shopping for about 90 minutes. When I got home it seemed to be working
fine and even Thunderbird was working.
I wrote to this list and learned that this will correct a selinux
label problem:
/.autorelabel and then reboot
This is in man selinux so when next it takes hours to boot up you can
relabel your computer and be back in business, I did this and things
went back to normal.
So now that I know what to do the next time we get a selinux
upgrade. I checked and sure enough when I turned on selinux the next day
there was an update. So right now I will set up to use SELinux in it's
safest mode and continue to use it unless it becomes a purple plague.
--
Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
Linux User
#450462 http://counter.li.org.
