Configure SELinux

How-to guide
3-min read

SELinux (Security-Enhanced Linux) is a Linux kernel security module that uses mandatory access control (MAC) to restrict processes and users to policies defined by the system administrator. It's available for most Linux distributions and enabled by default on newer Red Hat Enterprise Linux distributions.

Dynatrace Managed automatically detects the SELinux mode during installation and applies the correct file contexts so its services can run in enforcing mode. This requires the semanage utility on your system. Installation fails if the package is missing.

New installations—no additional steps required.
Existing installations—after enabling SELinux, run the reconfigure.sh script:
```
/opt/dynatrace-managed/installer/reconfigure.sh
```
Older versions—change SELinux mode to permissive.

Enable SELinux

Before enabling SELinux, make sure your system has the following packages:

policycoreutils
selinux-utils
selinux-basics

The steps below use Ubuntu as an example.

Use the apt command to install the following packages:

sudo apt install policycoreutils selinux-utils selinux-basics

Activate SELinux:

sudo selinux-activate

You should see:

SE Linux is activated. You may need to reboot now.

Set SELinux to enforcing mode:
```
sudo selinux-config-enforcing
```
Stop Dynatrace Managed services:
```
./dynatrace.sh stop
```
See Start/stop/restart a node for details.
Restart your system.
SELinux relabelling starts after the reboot. When finished, the system reboots one more time automatically.

Check the SELinux status:

# sestatus
SELinux status:                 enabled
SELinuxfs mount:                /sys/fs/selinux
SELinux root directory:         /etc/selinux
Loaded policy name:             default
Current mode:                   enforcing
Mode from config file:          error (Success)
Policy MLS status:              enabled
Policy deny_unknown status:     allowed
Memory protection checking:     requested (insecure)
Max kernel policy version:      31

Reconfigure Dynatrace Managed with SELinux enabled:
```
/opt/dynatrace-managed/installer/reconfigure.sh
```

Disable SELinux

To disable SELinux, follow these steps:

Open /etc/selinux/config and set SELINUX to disabled:
```
SELINUX=disabled
```
Stop Dynatrace Managed services:
```
./dynatrace.sh stop
```
See Start/stop/restart a node for details.
Reboot your system.
Reconfigure Dynatrace Managed after disabling SELinux:
```
/opt/dynatrace-managed/installer/reconfigure.sh
```

Operating system changes

If SELinux is in enforcing mode and you use custom paths for installation or storage, the Managed installer updates the file context of all Dynatrace Managed directories to usr_t. For a custom path /custom-dir/dynatrace-managed, it runs:

semanage fcontext -a -t usr_t "/custom-dir/dynatrace-managed"

semanage fcontext -a -t usr_t "/custom-dir/dynatrace-managed/.*"

restorecon -R /custom-dir/dynatrace-managed