Hi,

29.07.2008 12:51, Frank Sweetser wrote:
> Arno Lehmann wrote:
>>>> In any case, resetting the SELinux attributes is rather trivial ...
>>> This is something I have to do. And could dedicate paid time to it, if I
>>> feel that is going somewhere.
>> Surely.
>>
>>> I have read that Amanda handles SELinux, but the information regarding
>>> that is cryptic as well.
>> As Amanda relies on dump or tar to do actual backups, you end up with the
>> question of those handle the xattribs. dump usually does, regarding tar I'm
>> unsure. the tar info and man pages on my system don't talk about that.
> 
> In the case of tar at least, the main upstream version is not selinux aware.
> RedHat/Fedora ship with a version that has been patched to handle xattr
> support, which should be helpful.  I can dig up the patch from the tar that
> Fedora ships if anyone is interested.

That points us at one other problem with Amandas approach: No platform 
independenca. A backup done with dump on a Sun can be practically 
useless if you need to restore to a Windows or linux box... Similarly, 
xattrs captured by a patched tar don't help you much if you've got to 
restore to a newly installed replacement system.

...
>>
>> (By the way - I believe that SELinux is not widely used as it's complicated
>> to use effectively. Actually, none of my customers uses it, and I assume
>> they've got their reasons...)
> 
> It's not incredibly widely used across different distributions, but it's
> seeing more and more use in RedHat and Fedora ones.   A lot of work has been
> done on making it usable as well as secure in the last couple of years.  The
> first pass had a well deserved reputation for making a system secure by making
> it unusable, but recent versions are actually pretty good about "just working"
> out of the box, and come with far, far better troubleshooting and
> configuration tools.

I still see the advice to disable SELinux if third party applications 
don't work on RH quite often... In fact I always wonder why people 
install and use SELinux if they're not capable of managing it, but 
that's another story...

Arno

> 

-- 
Arno Lehmann
IT-Service Lehmann
Sandstr. 6, 49080 Osnabrück
www.its-lehmann.de

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