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November 18, 2005
FC4 samba_share_t problem
Ran into a strange problem Friday evening, with the latest FC4 kernel, "2.6.14-1.1637_FC4".
Being a Linux and Windows user (now MacOS as well), the preferred method for sharing files between these systems is of course, samba. For security reasons, my samba server, located on a Fedora Core 4 machine, runs with SELinux active _and_ enforced.
When a folder is created over samba with SELinux enabled, smbd sets the appropriate security context to "samba_share_t". This is necessary because smbd is restricted to serving files with that security context alone.
For a reason yet to be identified, the part where the security context gets set is no longer taking place with kernel "2.6.14-1.1637_FC4". Whenever a new file/folder is created over samba, it just gets an empty security context:
In the screenshot above, "k1532" has been created over samba with the system running an older, "2.6.13-1.1532_FC4" kernel. The "k1637" folder has been created under the lastest kernel and as you can see, there is no security context attached.
Most odd.
Anyway, I guess there is a price for riding the penguin for free, which comes back into the form of glitches like the above. And unlike Windows, rebooting doesn't help. Unless you reboot into an older kernel, of course - like I'm doing now.
Happy weekend!
Posted by Costin Raiu at November 18, 2005 11:58 PM
Comments
You're most likely right about the kernel messing up file access rights; but why "the preferred method for sharing [...] is, of course, samba" is beyond me, since samba is proprietary and reverse engineered on UNIX. My first choice would have been FTP (or SFTP if you like it better), so I fail to understand the "of course" part :-).
Posted by: rc 
at November 23, 2005 4:18 PM
> ... right about the kernel messing up file access rights
You gotta love Linux.
> My first choice would have been FTP (or SFTP if you like it better)
Unfortunately, you can't scan virus collections over FTP.
Posted by: Costin Raiu at November 23, 2005 4:30 PM