An interesting topic ... heading out to cast vote now.
In our environment, about 6 years ago we informally identified the gap
(grey area, war, however it is described) between server / network
managers and developers / Librarians as an obstacle to our end goals and
have put considerable effort into closing it. The key efforts being
communication (more planning, meetings, informal sessions),
collaboration (no-one is working in a vacuum), and the willingness to
expand/stretch job descriptions (programmers sometimes participate in
hardware / OS work and sysadmins will attend interface / application
planning meetings). Supportive management helps.
The end result is that sysadmins try as hard as possible to fully
understand what an application is doing/requires on "their"
hardware/networks, and programmers almost never run any applications
that sysadmins don't know about.
So, SELinux has never been a problem because we know what a server needs
to do before it ends up in a developer's hands and developers know not
to pound their heads against the desk for a day before talking to
sysadmins about something that doesn't work. Well, for the most part,
anyway ;-)
-Graham
Ross Singer wrote:
On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 11:18 AM, Graham Stewart
<graham.stew...@utoronto.ca> wrote:
We run many Library / web / database applications on RedHat servers with
SELinux enabled. Sometimes it takes a bit of investigation and horsing
around but I haven't yet found a situation where it had to be disabled.
setsebool and chcon can solve most problems and SELinux is an excellent
enhancement to standard filesystem and ACL security.
Agreed that SELinux is useful but it is a tee-otal pain in the keister
if you're ignorantly working against it because you didn't actually
know it was there.
It's sort of the perfect embodiment between the disconnect between the
developer and the sysadmin. And, if this sort of tension interests
you, vote for Bess Sadler's presentation at Code4lib 2010: "Vampires
vs. Werewolves: Ending the War Between Developers and Sysadmins with
Puppet" and anything else that interests you.
http://vote.code4lib.org/election/index/13
-Ross "Bringin' it on home" Singer.
--
Graham Stewart
Network and Storage Services Manager, Information Technology Services
University of Toronto Library
130 St. George Street
Toronto, Ontario graham.stew...@utoronto.ca
Canada M5S 1A5 Phone: 416-978-6337 | Mobile: 416-550-2806 |
Fax: 416-978-1668
