SELinux

Policy Management Tools

Tresys Technology, a network services company, has published a set of open source GUI tools for SELinux policy management. Most releases of SELinux include at least one of the Tresys tools, which are:

Apol

Supports analysis of the SELinux policy.conf file.

Seaudit

Supports searching, sorting, and viewing AVC log messages.

Sepcut

Supports browsing and editing of SELinux policy components.

Seuserx

Supports adding, changing, and removing Linux and SELinux users.

The following subsections briefly describe these tools. My intention is not to show you how to use the tools but to help you understand what they do, so that you can decide when to use them and which tool to use. Because the tools are regularly improved, I advise you to refer to the tools’ help files for information on operating them. If your SELinux release does not include the Tresys tools, you can obtain them at http://www.tresys.com/.

Apol

The Apol tool enables you to analyze an SELinux policy. It does not work with the component files that compose the policy, but only with policy.conf. So you should compile the SELinux policy before using Apol. You can do so by issuing the command:

make load

from within the SELinux src/policy directory. Figure 9-1 shows Apol’s main window after using its File menu to open the policy.conf file.

Figure 9-1. Apol’s main window

Apol’s main window contains four primary tabs:

Policy ...