Topics: Red Hat / Linux, Security, System Admin

Disabling SELinux

Security Enhanced Linux, or short SELinux, is by default enabled on Red Hat Enterprise (and alike) Linux systems.

To determine the status of SELinux, simply run: 

# sestatus
There will be times when it may be necessary to disable SELinux. Or for example, when a Linux system is not Internet facing, you may not need to have SELinux enabled.

From the command line, you can edit the /etc/sysconfig/selinux file. This file is a symbolic link to file /etc/selinux/config.

By default, option SELINUX will be set to enforcing in this file: 
# This file controls the state of SELinux on the system.
# SELINUX= can take one of these three values:
#     enforcing - SELinux security policy is enforced.
#     permissive - SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing.
#     disabled - No SELinux policy is loaded.
SELINUX=enforcing
By changing it to "permissive", you will disable SELinux: 
SELINUX=permissive




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