SELinux/Tutorials/Creating your own policy module file

Creating your own policy module file
Eventually, you will need to write your own policy module files and maintain them over the lifecycle of your system. Maintaining SELinux policies isn't that difficult, but it is not a fire-and-forget method: changes you make on the policy will be propagated through the updates. In some cases, you might need to update your policy to be compatible with upstream SELinux policy changes. When that occurs, it is important to keep track of the policies you made.

But let's first look at how a policy file looks like...

The structure of a SELinux policy module
When developing or updating SELinux policies, it is recommended to use the modular approach. In this situation, you can create your own policy module (say and deal with it as if it was part of the global set of policies. Such a policy is written using a .te file (type enforcement) and an optional .fc file (file contexts) and .if file (interfaces).

Let's create a local policy that contains an allow rule.

Note the use of the backtick (`) right after the gen_require call. This is important, as it denotes the start of the block (and the other regular tick character (') which denotes the end of the block).

Given this file, you can now easily create the SELinux policy module :

Important to remember here is that the name of the file and the name of the module inside the file (policy_module(localpolicy, 1.0)) and the name of the resulting binary file  are related and need to use the same name (just a different suffix).

You can then load the resulting binary file:

Once loaded, it will remain loaded even after reboots. You could remove the and other files if you want, but we seriously recommend to keep the source files so that, if you need to make enhancements, you can just edit the files, rebuild the .pp file and load it again.

The reference policy framework
The mentioned gen_require block is new - it is part of the reference policy build framework, and will be translated during the make -f ... command earlier on towards SELinux rules. Gentoo uses the reference policy framework, just like most other SELinux-enabled distributions, for the policy development.

One of the principles within the reference policy framework is that you do not include types or attributes from other policies explicitly. Instead, you need to use the interfaces that are made available by the policy modules. In the above example, the role of the policy we had is to enhance the rights of the user_t domain. Hence, we can assume the user_t domain is indeed a good type to directly use (otherwise you'd need to update the policy, which is governed by Gentoo's policy). The other type (var_log_t) is an external one (it is a target type), so we need to use an interface (if it exists).

If you have USE="doc" set when installing then you will have an overview of the available interfaces at  as an easy-to-browse HTML site. In the case of the permissions mentioned in the example, we need to use logging_list_logs:

This makes the intention of the rule more clear. You can also add in comments in the file as you can see, making it easy to document your policy as you add to it more and more.

Multiple modules
We used a single module for a small update; you can use separate modules or put it all in one. This is a matter of preference, although we recommend that you combine all statements related to the same actor(s) (like the user_t in the above case) and use different modules for different actors. Also name the modules to something that you know are your own policy changes and not provided by Gentoo or upstream projects (for instance by prepending all policy names with local or my).

Keep the sources of your policy close to you; also, it doesn't hurt to install the binary files (the *.pp ones) at the same location as the other policy modules. This way, if conflicts occur, the full reload that Gentoo's packages will trigger (meaning that they will attempt to load all installed policies at once instead of gradually) will take these modules into account as well.

Gentoo support for additional modules
Finally, if you have additional modules, you can easily integrate them in Gentoo's way of handling policy files. Simply create a package using the following ebuild (filled in for the localpolicy module):

Add your files into the directory of the package, and you're all set.

What you need to remember
What you should remember from this tutorial is that
 * policies are written through the .te files, with optional .fc and .if files
 * policy modules are build based on the above files, resulting in a loadable .pp file
 * policy development prefers the use of the interfaces provided by other modules