10/9/21, 5:53 AM How to Disable SELinux Temporarily or Permanently

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How to Disable SELinux Temporarily or Permanently

Aaron Kili Last Updated: July 25, 2019 Linux Commands 5 Comments

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Linux is regarded as one of the most secure operating systems you can use today, that is because of its illustrious
security implementation features such as SELinux (Security-Enhanced Linux).

Disable SELinux in CentOS, RHEL and Fedora

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For starters,ssssss
SELinux is described as a mandatory access control (MAC)
25 security structure
Male executed in the kernel.

SELinux offers a means of enforcing some security policies which would otherwise No
not be effectively implemented
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10/9/21, 5:53 AM How to Disable SELinux Temporarily or Permanently

by a System Administrator.

When you install RHEL/CentOS or several derivatives, the SELinux feature or service is enabled by default, due to
this some applications on your system may not actually support this security mechanism. Therefore, to make such
applications function normally, you have to disable or turn off SELinux.

Important: If you don’t want to disable SELinux, then you should read the following articles to implement some
mandatory access control on files and services to function properly.

Don’t Miss: Setup Mandatory Access Control with SELinux in Linux

Don’t Miss: Implement Mandatory Access Control with SELinux and AppArmor in Linux

In this how-to guide, we shall walk through steps you can follow to check the status of SELinux and also disable
SELinux in CentOS/RHEL and Fedora, in case it is enabled.

How Can I Disable SELinux in Linux

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The first thing to do is to check the status of SELinux on your system, and you can do this by running the following
command:

$ sestatus

Check Status of SELinux

Next, proceed to disabling SELinux on your system, this can be done temporarily or permanently depending on what
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achieve.
ssssss 25 Male

No

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10/9/21, 5:53 AM How to Disable SELinux Temporarily or Permanently

Disable SELinux Temporarily

To disable SELinux temporarily, issue the command below as root:

# echo 0 > /selinux/enforce

Alternatively, you can use the setenforce tool as follows:

# setenforce 0

Else, use the Permissive option instead of 0 as below:

# setenforce Permissive

These methods above will only work until the next reboot, therefore to disable SELinux permanently, move to the
next section.

Disable SELinux Permanently

To permanently disable SELinux, use your favorite text editor to open the file /etc/sysconfig/selinux as
follows:

# vi /etc/sysconfig/selinux

SELinux Enforcing Mode

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ssssss
Then change the directive SELinux=enforcing to SELinux=disabled
25
as shownMale
in the below image.
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10/9/21, 5:53 AM How to Disable SELinux Temporarily or Permanently

SELINUX=disabled

Disable SELinux Permanently

Then, save and exit the file, for the changes to take effect, you need to reboot your system and then check the status
of SELinux using sestatus command as shown:

$ sestatus

Check SELinux Status

In conclusion, we moved through the simple steps you can follow to disable SELinux on CentOS/RHEL and Fedora.
There is nothing much to cover under this topic but additionally, finding out more about SELinux can prove helpful
especially for those interested in exploring security features in Linux.

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do ask for help in the comments section.

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5 thoughts on “How to Disable SELinux Temporarily or

Permanently”

Farhad
July 27, 2021 at 1:29 pm

When you change /etc/sysconfig/selinux, the SELINUX kernel module still will be loaded, just won’t enforce
any policy anymore.

To prevent the whole module from loading we need to add “selinux=0” to the kernel parameters during boot
time or execute this command and reboot the system:

$ sudo grubby --update-kernel ALL --args selinux=0

Reply

01101001b
October 9, 2019 at 12:31 pm
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ssssss 25 Male

No
This article proved quite useful to me. Thank you!
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Reply

Mik
August 22, 2019 at 7:19 am

Only me have that file in /etc/selinux/ instead?

Reply

James Stone
July 26, 2019 at 5:02 pm

The only thing you left out is why. Why would you do this?

Reply

Aaron Kili
July 29, 2019 at 10:48 am

@James

This paragraph states the why bit: “When you install RHEL/CentOS or several derivatives, the SELinux
feature or service is enabled by default, due to this, some applications on your system may not actually
support this security mechanism. Therefore, to make such applications function normally, you have to
disable or turn off SELinux.”

Reply

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