Introduction
There is a Linux kernel module that protects your system from security issues. It allows Linux users to have better control of their systems. It is called SELinux (Security-Enhanced Linux).
With SELinux, administrators, and users specify the policy rules that control how processes running on the system and users interact with each other. Besides, the SELinux also rules the way how users and processes interact with files.
There are three modes of SELinux:
- Enforcing: SELinux will be based on policy rules to allow access
- Permissive: SELinux will log all actions that been denied if they running in the enforcing mode
- Disabled: There is no SELinux policy loaded
By default, SELinux is enabled in enforcing mode on CentOS 7.
It’s highly recommended to enable the SELinux and keep it running in enforcing mode. However, in some cases, you need to set the SELinux in the permissive mode or disable it.
This tutorial will show you the way to disable SELinux on CentOS 7.
Verify the SELinux status
In order to check whether the SELinux is enabled or not? Let’s run the following commands:
$ sudo sestatus
The output:
As you can be seen, the SELinux is enabled in enforcing mode.
Disable the SELinux status
You can simply change the mode of SELinux from enforcing to permissive by running the following command:
$ sudo setenforce 0
The output:
The above command only affects the current session. In order to disable the SELinux permanently, you need to edit /etc/selinux/config file:
Let’s reboot your CentOS system then check the SELinux status again:
Conclusion
You’ve already known the way to permanently disable SELinux on CentOS 7.
If you have any concerns, please let me know. Thank you for reading.
Karim Buzdar holds a degree in telecommunication engineering and holds several sysadmin certifications including CCNA RS, SCP, and ACE. As an IT engineer and technical author, he writes for various websites.
