What is 'selinux'?

[Deja Q]

I had to disable it to get the Nvidia driver working under Fedora Core 5.

I found this:
http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/

???

Fascinating.

[RoyGBiv]

1. Security Enhanced Linux ...

It's a Linux kernel extension originally developed by the NSA, which is why you found the NSA page about it. It implements something called mandatory access controls.

It has its uses, if you trust the developers, but in standard use tends to have nothing but negative side-effects based on what I've seen from the community forums. I think I recall that Fedora asks if you want to install it, but of course you can simply disable it if it is causing problems.

Here's Fedora's FAQ on the subject:

http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/selinux-faq/