Switching to Targeted Reference Policy

This guide will walk you through switching to the targeted reference policy on a Fedora system. Note: Reference Policy should not yet be used on production systems.

Download and unpack the policy

The policy is available from Sourceforge. Download the policy, and unpack it to a temporary directory. Then use the install-src make target to install the policy sources. 

# tar -jxvf refpolicy-20050922.tar.bz2 -C /tmp
# cd /tmp/refpolicy
# make install-src

Configure the policy

The policy source is found in the /etc/selinux/refpolicy/src/policy/ directory. 

# cd /etc/selinux/refpolicy/src/policy

Edit the policy Makefile (/etc/selinux/refpolicy/src/policy/Makefile). Near the top of the file, the policy has a few build options. The TYPE needs to be set to targeted, the DISTRO option needs to be uncommented and set to redhat, and DIRECT_INITRC should be set to y. 

########################################
#
# Configurable portions of the Makefile
#

# Policy version
# By default, checkpolicy will create the highest
# version policy it supports.  Setting this will
# override the version.
#OUTPUT_POLICY = 18

# Policy Type
# strict, targeted,
# strict-mls, targeted-mls,
# strict-mcs, targeted-mcs
TYPE = targeted

# Policy Name
# If set, this will be used as the policy
# name.  Otherwise the policy type will be
# used for the name.
NAME = refpolicy

# Distribution
# Some distributions have portions of policy
# for programs or configurations specific to the
# distribution.  Setting this will enable options
# for the distribution.
# redhat, gentoo, debian, and suse are current options.
# Fedora users should enable redhat.
DISTRO = redhat

# Direct admin init
# Setting this will allow sysadm to directly
# run init scripts, instead of requring run_init.
# This is a build option, as role transitions do
# not work in conditional policy.
DIRECT_INITRC=y

# Build monolithic policy.  Putting n here
# will build a loadable module policy.
# Only monolithic policies are currently supported.
MONOLITHIC=y

# Uncomment this to disable command echoing
#QUIET:=@

Install the policy

Next, install the policy, application configuration files, and file contexts. 

# make install

Change SELinux Configuration

Modify the /etc/selinux/config file, and set SELINUXTYPE to refpolicy. It should look similar to this: 

# This file controls the state of SELinux on the system.
# SELINUX= can take one of these three values:
#       enforcing - SELinux security policy is enforced.
#       permissive - SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing.
#       disabled - No SELinux policy is loaded.
SELINUX=enforcing
# SELINUXTYPE= can take one of these two values:
#       targeted - Only targeted network daemons are protected.
#       strict - Full SELinux protection.
SELINUXTYPE=refpolicy

Restart and Relabel

The system needs to be restarted with the new policy, and relabeled on booting, to finalize the switch. 

# touch /.autorelabel
# shutdown -r now