Re: SELinux for RHEL3

[Bill McCarty <bmccarty pt-net net>]

Hi Russell,

--On Wednesday, April 14, 2004 12:08 AM +1000 Russell Coker 
<russell coker com au> wrote:

> The problem with RHEL 3 is that some changes to significant parts of it
> are  needed, coreutils, PAM, sysvinit, and a few others.  The advantage
> for using  RHEL 3 in production is that it's not changing much, so as
> long as those few  packages aren't updated you don't need to re-compile
> anything.  If those  packages are updated then someone will have to
> recompile the SE Linux  versions.

Yes, we're in close agreement: there's a significant burden involved in 
running SELinux under RHEL. Only those who're comfortable tweaking source 
code should even consider doing so. I'm a bit crazy <g>: I've actually 
backported SELinux to RHL 7.x for use in an appliance based on that 
release. But, I've only gotten as far as coaxing the code to compile; I 
haven't yet done any testing. When I do, I may find that I have a lot more 
work to do <g>.

> Also there are some programs such as userhelper which have had SE Linux
> support added for which you probably wouldn't want to do a RHEL 3 port.
> This  means that your RHEL 3 machine will lack some of the SE Linux
> functionality  that Fedora has (you will need RHEL 4 for full
> functionality).

Yes, these added features are a real convenience. But, I don't find them an 
absolute necessity. The long maintenance horizon of RHEL 3 helps offset 
their absence.

With respect to RHEL 4, I'm hoping for an SELinux Christmas <g>.

Cheers,

---------------------------------------------------
Bill McCarty, Ph.D.
Professor of Information Technology
Azusa Pacific University