Red Hat Knowledgebase

Red Hat Global Support Services recommends only disabling SELinux if you are certain you will never want to run SELinux in the future. Files created with SELinux disabled will not have the information necessary to function when SELinux is enabled. Please see the article "How do I enable enforcing or permissive mode for SELinux" if you would like to stop SELinux from enforcing its policy, but still have SELinux running.

The tool system-config-securitylevel may be used to turn SELinux on or off by checking the Enabled tickbox. You will have to select the SELinux tab to see this option. The system must be rebooted for the change to take effect.

The tool will look similar to the following:

SELinux may also be disabled by editing /etc/selinux/config and by setting the SELINUX value to be SELINUX=Disabled and rebooting the machine.

SELinux may also be disabled by appending the line "selinux=0" to the kernel boot options. A GRUB example may be as follows:

 
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES (2.6.9-5.EL)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-5.EL ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet selinux=0
        initrd /initrd-2.6.9-5.EL.img