|
|
 |
|
| |
NOTE: CentOS Enterprise Linux is built from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux source code. Other than logo and name changes CentOS Enterprise Linux is compatible with the equivalent Red Hat version. This document applies equally to both Red Hat and CentOS Enterprise Linux.
SELinux plays an important role early in system start-up. Since
all of the processes must be labeled with their proper domain,
init does some essential actions early in
the boot process that keep labeling and policy enforcement in
sync.
-
After the kernel has been loaded during boot, the initial
process is assigned the predefined initial
SID kernel. Initial SIDs
are used for bootstrapping before the policy is loaded.
-
/sbin/init mounts /proc/, then looks for the selinuxfs file system type. If it is
present, that means SELinux is enabled in the kernel.
-
If init does not find SELinux in the
kernel, finds it is disabled via the selinux=0 boot parameter, or if /etc/selinux/config specifies that SELINUX=disabled, boot proceeds with a
non-SELinux system.
At the same time, init sets the
enforcing status if it is different from the setting in /etc/selinux/config. This happens when a parameter
is passed during boot. The default mode is permissive until the
policy is loaded, then enforcement is set by the configuration file
or by the parameters enforcing=0
or enforcing=1.
-
If SELinux is present, /selinux/ is
mounted.
-
The kernel checks /selinux/policyvers
for the supported policy version. init
looks into /etc/selinux/config to see
which policy is active, such as the targeted policy, and loads the
associated file at $SELINUX_POLICY/policy.<version>.
If the binary policy is not the version
supported by the kernel, init attempts to
load the policy file if it is a previous version. This provides
backward compatibility with older policy versions.
If the local settings in /etc/selinux/targeted/booleans are different from
those compiled in the policy, init
modifies the policy in memory based on the local settings prior to
loading the policy into the kernel.
-
Now that the policy is loaded, the initial SIDs are mapped to
security contexts in the policy, as defined in $SELINUX_SRC/initial_sid_contexts. In the case of
the targeted policy, the new domain is user_u:system_r:unconfined_t. The kernel
can now begin to get security contexts dynamically from the
in-kernel security server.
-
init then re-executes itself so that it
can transition to a different domain, if the policy defines it. For
the targeted policy, there is no transition defined and init remains in the unconfined_t domain.
-
At this point, init continues with its
normal boot.
The reason for init to re-execute
itself is to accommodate stricter SELinux policy controls. The
objective of a re-execution is to transition to a new domain with
its own granular rules. The only way a process can gain a domain is
during execution, meaning such programs are the only entry points into the domains. For example, if the
policy has a specific domain for init such
as init_t, there has to be a
method to get from the initial SID, such as kernel, to the proper runtime domain for
init. Because this transition may need to
occur, init is coded to re-execute itself
after loading the policy.
This transition with init happens if
the rule domain_auto_trans(kernel_t,
init_exec_t, <target_domain_t>) is present in
the policy. This rule states that an automatic transition occurs on
anything executing from the kernel_t domain that executes a file of
type init_exec_t. When this
execution occurs, the new process is assigned the domain
<target_domain_t>, using an actual
target domain such as init_t.
|
|
|
