restorecon(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | ARGUMENTS | NOTES | AUTHOR | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

restorecon(8)             SELinux User Command             restorecon(8)

NAME         top

       restorecon - restore file(s) default SELinux security contexts.

SYNOPSIS         top

       restorecon [-r|-R] [-m] [-n] [-p] [-v] [-i] [-F] [-W] [-I|-D]
       [-x] [-e directory] pathname ...

       restorecon [-f infilename] [-e directory] [-r|-R] [-m] [-n] [-p]
       [-v] [-i] [-F] [-W] [-I|-D] [-x] [-T nthreads]

DESCRIPTION         top

       This manual page describes the restorecon program.

       This program is primarily used to set the security context
       (extended attributes) on one or more files.

       It can also be run at any other time to correct inconsistent
       labels, to add support for newly-installed policy or, by using
       the -n option, to passively check whether the file contexts are
       all set as specified by the active policy (default behavior).

       If a file object does not have a context, restorecon will write
       the default context to the file object's extended attributes. If
       a file object has a context, restorecon will only modify the type
       portion of the security context.  The -F option will force a
       replacement of the entire context.

       If a file is labeled with customizable SELinux type (for list of
       customizable types see
       /etc/selinux/{SELINUXTYPE}/contexts/customizable_types),
       restorecon won't reset the label unless the -F option is used.

       It is the same executable as setfiles but operates in a slightly
       different manner depending on its argv[0].

OPTIONS         top

       -e directory
              exclude a directory (repeat the option to exclude more
              than one directory, Requires full path).

       -f infilename
              infilename contains a list of files to be processed. Use
              “-” for stdin.

       -F     Force reset of context to match file_context for
              customizable files, and the default file context, changing
              the user, role, range portion as well as the type.

       -h, -? display usage information and exit.

       -i     ignore files that do not exist.

       -I     ignore digest to force checking of labels even if the
              stored SHA1 digest matches the specfiles SHA1 digest. The
              digest will then be updated provided there are no errors.
              See the NOTES section for further details.

       -D     Set or update any directory SHA1 digests. Use this option
              to enable usage of the security.sehash extended attribute.

       -m     do not read /proc/mounts to obtain a list of non-seclabel
              mounts to be excluded from relabeling checks.  Setting
              this option is useful where there is a non-seclabel fs
              mounted with a seclabel fs mounted on a directory below
              this.

       -n     don't change any file labels (passive check).  To display
              the files whose labels would be changed, add -v.

       -o outfilename
              Deprecated - This option is no longer supported.

       -p     show progress by printing the number of files in 1k blocks
              unless relabeling the entire OS, that will then show the
              approximate percentage complete. Note that the -p and -v
              options are mutually exclusive.

       -R, -r change files and directories file labels recursively
              (descend directories).

       -v     show changes in file labels. Multiple -v options increase
              the verbosity. Note that the -v and -p options are
              mutually exclusive.

       -W     display warnings about entries that had no matching files
              by outputting the selabel_stats(3) results.

       -0     the separator for the input items is assumed to be the
              null character (instead of the white space).  The quotes
              and the backslash characters are also treated as normal
              characters that can form valid input.  This option finally
              also disables the end of file string, which is treated
              like any other argument.  Useful when input items might
              contain white space, quote marks or backslashes.  The
              -print0 option of GNU find produces input suitable for
              this mode.

       -x     prevent restorecon from crossing file system boundaries.

       -T nthreads
              use up to nthreads threads.  Specify 0 to create as many
              threads as there are available CPU cores; 1 to use only a
              single thread (default); or any positive number to use the
              given number of threads (if possible).

ARGUMENTS         top

              pathname ...  The pathname for the file(s) to be
              relabeled.

NOTES         top

       1.  restorecon by default does not operate recursively on
           directories. Paths leading up the final component of the
           file(s) are canonicalized using realpath(3) before labeling.

       2.  If the pathname specifies the root directory and the -vR or
           -vr options are set and the audit system is running, then an
           audit event is automatically logged stating that a "mass
           relabel" took place using the message label FS_RELABEL.

       3.  To improve performance when relabeling file systems
           recursively (i.e. the -R or -r option is set), the -D option
           to restorecon will cause it to store a SHA1 digest of the
           default specfiles set in an extended attribute named
           security.sehash on each directory specified in pathname ...
           once the relabeling has been completed successfully. These
           digests will be checked should restorecon -D be rerun with
           the same pathname parameters. See selinux_restorecon(3) for
           further details.

           The -I option will ignore the SHA1 digest from each directory
           specified in pathname ...  and provided the -n option is NOT
           set and recursive mode is set, files will be relabeled as
           required with the digests then being updated provided there
           are no errors.

AUTHOR         top

       This man page was written by Dan Walsh <[email protected]>.  Some
       of the content of this man page was taken from the setfiles man
       page written by Russell Coker <[email protected]>.  The
       program was written by Dan Walsh <[email protected]>.

SEE ALSO         top

       setfiles(8), fixfiles(8), load_policy(8), checkpolicy(8),
       customizable_types(5)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the selinux (Security-Enhanced Linux user-
       space libraries and tools) project.  Information about the
       project can be found at 
       ⟨https://github.com/SELinuxProject/selinux/wiki⟩.  If you have a
       bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨https://github.com/SELinuxProject/selinux/wiki/Contributing⟩.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/SELinuxProject/selinux⟩ on 2024-06-14.  (At
       that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
       the repository was 2023-05-11.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       [email protected]

                              10 June 2016                 restorecon(8)

Pages that refer to this page: selinux_restorecon_xattr(3)fixfiles(8)restorecond(8)restorecon_xattr(8)selinux(8)semanage-fcontext(8)setfiles(8)