Red Hat Summit Red Hat SummitSupportConsoleDevelopersStart a trialContact

Using SELinux for SAP HANA

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions 9

Red Hat Customer Content Services

Abstract

Configuring SELinux helps you enhance your system’s security. SELinux is an implementation of Mandatory Access Control (MAC), and provides an additional layer of security. The SELinux policy defines how users and processes can interact with the files on the system. You can control which users can perform which actions by mapping them to specific SELinux confined users.

Making open source more inclusive

Red Hat is committed to replacing problematic language in our code and documentation. We are beginning with these four terms: master, slave, blacklist, and whitelist. Due to the enormity of this endeavor, these changes will be gradually implemented over upcoming releases. For more details on making our language more inclusive, see our CTO Chris Wright’s message.

Providing feedback on Red Hat documentation

We appreciate your feedback on our documentation. Let us know how we can improve it.

Submitting feedback through Jira (account required)

  1. Make sure you are logged in to the Jira website.
  2. Provide feedback by clicking on this link.
  3. Enter a descriptive title in the Summary field.
  4. Enter your suggestion for improvement in the Description field. Include links to the relevant parts of the documentation.
  5. If you want to be notified about future updates, please make sure you are assigned as Reporter.
  6. Click Create at the bottom of the dialogue.

Chapter 1. Introduction to SELinux

SELinux provides enhanced security by enforcing security policies, using labels for files, processes and ports, and logging unauthorized access attempts.

SELinux is enabled and set to enforcing mode on RHEL 9 by default and security policies for system processes are maintained by Red Hat. For more information, refer to Changing SELinux states and modes on RHEL. You can refer to SAP Note 3108302 - SAP HANA DB: Recommended OS Settings for RHEL 9, to know which HANA versions have been tested by SAP with SELinux set to enforcing and unconfined mode.

Red Hat recommends that you use SELinux in enforcing mode to configure your RHEL systems running on SAP HANA. This document describes the necessary configuration changes that you must make.

In case you come across SELinux related issues while testing or running your SAP HANA system, SAP reserves the right to disable SELinux. However, most of the problems can be solved by changing SELinux mode from enforcing to permissive. The advantage is that your system is still operating while you analyze and solve the problem.

Chapter 2. Configuring SELinux to exclude SAP HANA directories

By default, any application for which no SELinux security policy has been defined is blocked by SELinux if your RHEL system is running with SELinux set to enforcing mode. As of today, SAP does not provide SELinux policies for SAP HANA. For running SAP HANA executables while SELinux is set to enforcing, a certain SELinux boolean has to be set, and the SAP HANA related directories have to be excluded from SELinux protection. You can also use the fapolicyd framework to protect your SAP HANA software. For more information, refer to the Configuring fapolicyd to allow only SAP HANA executables document.

Prerequisites

  • SAP HANA is installed and stopped, or not yet installed.
  • SELinux is available and set to enforcing mode.
  • The directories in which SAP HANA and related software are installed (typically /hana and /usr/sap) exist.

Procedure

  1. Use the following command to set the SELinux boolean selinuxuser_execmod to 1, allowing unconfined executables to use libraries that require text relocation (such as SAP HANA): 

    # setsebool -P selinuxuser_execmod 1
    Copy to Clipboard

  2. Use the following commands to relabel the directories and files used by SAP HANA (typically /hana and /usr/sap) so that SAP HANA can be run in unconfined mode: 

    # semanage fcontext -a -t usr_t ‘/hana(/.)?’*
# semanage fcontext -a -t usr_t ‘/usr/sap(/.)?’*
# restorecon -Rv ‘/hana’
# restorecon -Rv ‘/usr/sap’
    Copy to Clipboard
    Note

    You can perform this step before or after installing SAP HANA, as all newly created directories and files below the upper level directories inherit the SELinux labels.

Verification

  • Use the following command to show the security context of a file or directory in /usr/bin and in /hana, confirming that the file or directory under /hana has the usr_t label: 

    [root@host01 ~]# ls -lZ /usr/bin/ls
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root system_u:object_r:bin_t:s0 143296 Jan  6  2023 /usr/bin/ls
[root@host01 ~]# ls -lZd /hana/shared
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root system_u:object_r:usr_t:s0 17 Apr 18 23:03 /hana/shared
    Copy to Clipboard

Chapter 3. Troubleshooting issues related to SELinux

For diagnosing issues related to SELinux, you can check the file /var/log/audit/audit.log, as follows:

  1. To query Audit logs, use the ausearch tool. SELinux decisions, such as allowing or disallowing access, are cached in the Access Vector Cache (AVC). Therefore, you should use the AVC and USER_AVC values for the message type parameter, for example: 

    # ausearch -m AVC,USER_AVC,SELINUX_ERR,USER_SELINUX_ERR -ts boot
    Copy to Clipboard
  2. If there are no matches, check if the Audit daemon is running.

  3. If it is not running, then perform the following steps:

    1. Restart the audit.
    2. Re-run the denied scenario.
    3. Check the Audit log again.

    For more information about solving SELinux related issues, see Troubleshooting problems related to SELinux.

Chapter 4. Additional information

  • Depending on your environment (cloud providers, third party user tools, and agents), you should change SELinux labels on additional mount points (/opt, /sapmnt, and /trans).

Legal Notice

Copyright © 2024 Red Hat, Inc.
The text of and illustrations in this document are licensed by Red Hat under a Creative Commons Attribution–Share Alike 3.0 Unported license ("CC-BY-SA"). An explanation of CC-BY-SA is available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. In accordance with CC-BY-SA, if you distribute this document or an adaptation of it, you must provide the URL for the original version.
Red Hat, as the licensor of this document, waives the right to enforce, and agrees not to assert, Section 4d of CC-BY-SA to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law.
Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Shadowman logo, the Red Hat logo, JBoss, OpenShift, Fedora, the Infinity logo, and RHCE are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc., registered in the United States and other countries.
Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States and other countries.
Java® is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
XFS® is a trademark of Silicon Graphics International Corp. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries.
MySQL® is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the United States, the European Union and other countries.
Node.js® is an official trademark of Joyent. Red Hat is not formally related to or endorsed by the official Joyent Node.js open source or commercial project.
The OpenStack® Word Mark and OpenStack logo are either registered trademarks/service marks or trademarks/service marks of the OpenStack Foundation, in the United States and other countries and are used with the OpenStack Foundation's permission. We are not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by the OpenStack Foundation, or the OpenStack community.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Back to top
Red Hat logoGithubredditYoutubeTwitter

Learn

Try, buy, & sell

Communities

About Red Hat Documentation

We help Red Hat users innovate and achieve their goals with our products and services with content they can trust. Explore our recent updates.

Making open source more inclusive

Red Hat is committed to replacing problematic language in our code, documentation, and web properties. For more details, see the Red Hat Blog.

About Red Hat

We deliver hardened solutions that make it easier for enterprises to work across platforms and environments, from the core datacenter to the network edge.

Theme

© 2025 Red Hat, Inc.