Troubleshooting SELinux Issues

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Cloud
Security

Troubleshooting SELinux Issues

In this exercise, you will troubleshoot SELinux issues preventing a service from starting, as well as functioning correctly. *This course is not approved or sponsored by Red Hat.*

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Lab Info

Level

Advanced

Last updated

Sep 23, 2025

Duration

1h 0m

Challenge

Start Apache.
Attempt to start the service:
```
systemctl start httpd
```
View the status log:
```
systemctl status httpd -l
```
View recent SELinux errors:
```
ausearch -m avc -ts recent
```
Find the inode it's attempting to write to:
```
find / -inum &lt;inode number&gt;
```
View the SELinux context of the directory/file:
```
ls -Z /var/log/httpd
```
Restore the proper file context:
```
restorecon -Rv /var/log/httpd
```
Challenge

Resolve SELinux issues preventing viewing web content.
Attempt to view the web content:
```
curl localhost
```
View recent AVC errors:
```
ausearch -m avc -ts recent
```
Find the inode of the file/directory:
```
find / -inum &lt;inode number&gt;
```
View the context of the file/directory:
```
ls -Z /home/cloud_user/html/index.html
```
Install sealert:
```
yum -y install setroubleshoot setroubleshoot-server
```
Restart the auditd service:
```
service auditd restart
```
Use sealert for more information:
```
sealert -a /var/log/audit/audit.log
```
Lookup the httpd_read_user_content boolean:
```
getsebool httpd_read_user_content
```
Set the boolean to permit reading user content:
```
setsebool -P httpd_read_user_content=1
```
View the web content:
```
curl localhost
```

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