Knowledge Base:Portage fails to label files because setfiles does not work anymore

Synopsis

When trying to (re)install software, Portage breaks during the Setting SELinux security labels phase. The below error message is an example:

root #emerge ...

>>> Setting SELinux security labels
/usr/sbin/setfiles: error while loading shared libraries: libaudit.so.1: cannot
open shared object file: No such file or directory

Environment

This article applies to Gentoo Linux installations with a selinux profile:

root #eselect profile show

Current /etc/make.profile symlink:
  hardened/linux/amd64/selinux

Analysis

If for some reason setfiles no longer works, any install activity performed by Portage will fail since it calls setfilesduring each installation. Rebuilding sys-apps/policycoreutils thus fails.

Resolution

Rebuild sys-apps/policycoreutils but temporarily disable SELinux support:

root #FEATURES="-selinux" emerge -1 policycoreutils

Then, run rlpkg to fix the labels of the package:

root #rlpkg policycoreutils