The SELinux coloring book [pdf]

As a colouring book, it's not great.

SELinux always makes me feel like I'm a complete idiot (the worst thing about that is that I could be an idiot and not know it or refuse to acknowledge it).

So, maybe this introduction will make it a little more accessible.

You're not an idiot and you're not alone. In fact even those who you might expect to know it get it wrong and struggle to figure out what's gone on. For example recently I decide I didn't know systemd very well so picked a random service to setup and play with (tor) and a distro that uses systemd (Fedora 25).

I set up a hidden ssh service which was initially fine but after a reboot it failed with some weird permissions issue I couldn't figure out. Turns out this was some weird misconfiguration in SELinux for the Fedora tor package which afaik is still unresolved.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1279222

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1250893

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1375369

There's more of these floating around if you search for the right terms. If SELinux was widely well-understood then this would be a pretty simple issue to identify and resolve (note: I'm not well versed enough in it - I've applied a workaround and have resolved to return and fix it properly "later") but it doesn't appear that this is the case

At the point you have to make a "cute" coloring book (for adults) to make your OS seem more friendly, maybe it's time to reflect on the reality that there's something fundamentally wrong with the reasoning used to justify the logic required to use it.

"This is a bit too beefy for you." - Kernel