Auditing system behavior
Another approach to debugging application behavior is through Linux auditing, especially when it is not clear which process is responsible for performing a specific action, as this might make SELinux development a lot more difficult. When developers do not know which domain(s) they need to update privileges for, or do not know how exactly a resource is created, then the Linux audit subsystem can help.
With the Linux auditing subsystem, administrators can enable rules to log activities. In the audit log, the SELinux context of the subject (process) is shown as well, allowing SELinux developers to properly identify the domain to work with.
How to do it…
Let's look at how we can ask the Linux audit subsystem which process is responsible for creating a particular directory in a user's home directory through the following steps:
- As the root Linux user (and in an SELinux role with sufficient privileges), tell the audit subsystem to log all write- and attribute...
