Phil’s Diary - [Blog @ http://www.philsdiary.net/]
Yesterday’s Samba problems became today’s Apache problems. Late last night I figured out a way around the samba problems I’d been having, such that Abi could write to her choice of directory without problem. However today it appears those changes have broken Apache, which now can’t serve up pages from within those directorys, regardless of ownership and permission.
Which all started to smell a bit strange to me, until I realised what was at the bottom of it all. SELinux. I’d turned it on (the default option) when installing FC5, not really realising what it was and the effect it’d have.
In my humble opinion it’s quite a cool bit of software, if a tad complex to use. But it’s biggest drawback is it’s transparency. For someone used to something like Zonealarm, which pops up a big colourful warning when it’s intervened, SELinux’s total stealth is a tad confusing.
I guess big flashy colourful isn’t really needed, but it would have been nice for the various access and permission problems to be slightly better flagged, perhaps instead of “permission denied”, a slightly more helpful “SELinux, permission denied”. Would have made more sense to me.
Anyway, at least I know the odd symptoms I should watch for now.
The Sky engineer came today, replaced our broken Thompson Sky+ box with a dreaded Amstrad version. Reading round the net I get the impression this isn’t going to be a happy experience. And despite the Thompson going bang so early on, I think I still prefered it. I guess we’ll see
Posted by Phil on March 14, 2006 10:23 PM | Categories: Linux
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