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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | ARGUMENTS | EXIT STATUS | NOTES | EXAMPLE | AUTHOR | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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setfiles(8) SELinux User Command setfiles(8)
setfiles - set SELinux file security contexts.
setfiles [-c policy] [-C] [-d] [-l] [-m] [-n] [-e directory] [-E]
[-p] [-s] [-v] [-W] [-F] [-U] [-I|-D] [-T nthreads] spec_file
pathname ...
This manual page describes the setfiles program.
This program is primarily used to initialize the security context
fields (extended attributes) on one or more filesystems (or parts
of them). Usually it is initially run as part of the SELinux
installation process (a step commonly known as labeling).
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) or by
some other policy (see the -c option).
If a file object does not have a context, setfiles will write the
default context to the file object's extended attributes. If a
file object has a context, setfiles will only modify the type
portion of the security context. The -U option will also modify
the user and role portions of the security context. The -F option
will force a replacement of the entire context, including the
range portion of the security context and modify customizable
files.
-c check the validity of the contexts against the specified
binary policy.
-C If only relabeling errors are encountered during the file
tree walks, exit with status 1 rather than 255.
-d show what specification matched each file.
-e directory
directory to exclude (repeat option for more than one
directory).
-E treat conflicting specifications as errors, such as where
two hardlinks for the same inode have different contexts.
-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.
-U In addition to the type portion also change the user and
role portions, but not the range portion.
-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.
-l log changes in file labels to syslog.
-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).
-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.
-q Deprecated and replaced by -v. Has no effect on other
options or on program behavior.
-r rootpath
use an alternate root path. Used in meta-selinux for
OpenEmbedded/Yocto builds to label files under rootpath as
if they were at /
-s take a list of files from standard input instead of using a
pathname from the command line (equivalent to “-f -” ).
-v show changes in file labels and output any inode
association parameters. 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.
-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).
spec_file
The specification file which contains lines of the
following form:
regexp [type] context | <<none>>
The regular expression is anchored at both ends.
The optional type field specifies the file type as
shown in the mode field by the ls(1) program, e.g.
-- to match only regular files or -d to match only
directories. The context can be an ordinary
security context or the string <<none>> to specify
that the file is not to have its context changed.
The last matching specification is used. If there
are multiple hard links to a file that match
different specifications and those specifications
indicate different security contexts, then a warning
is displayed but the file is still labeled based on
the last matching specification other than <<none>>.
pathname ...
The pathname for the root directory of each file system to
be relabeled or a specific directory within a filesystem
that should be recursively descended and relabeled or the
pathname of a file that should be relabeled. Not used if
the -f or the -s option is used.
setfiles exits with status 0 if it encounters no errors. Fatal
errors result in status 255. Labeling errors encountered during
file tree walk(s) result in status 1 if the -C option is specified
and no other kind of error is encountered, and in status 255
otherwise.
1. setfiles operates recursively on directories. Paths leading up
the final component of the file(s) are not canonicalized
before labeling.
2. If the pathname specifies the root directory and the -v option
is 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 the -D option to setfiles will cause it to store a
SHA1 digest of the spec_file 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 setfiles -D
be rerun with the same spec_file and 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, files will be relabeled as required with the digests then
being updated provided there are no errors.
Fix labeling of /var/www/ including all sub-directories, using targeted policy file context definitions and list all context changes
# setfiles -v /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts /var/www/
List mislabeled files in user home directory and what the label should be based on targeted policy file context definitions
# setfiles -nv /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts ~
Fix labeling of files listed in file_list file, ignoring any that do not exist
# setfiles -vif file_list /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts
This man page was written by Russell Coker <[email protected]>.
The program was written by Stephen Smalley
<[email protected]>
restorecon(8), load_policy(8), checkpolicy(8)
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 2025-08-11. (At
that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
the repository was 2025-08-04.) 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 setfiles(8)
Pages that refer to this page: unsetfiles(1), selinux_restorecon_xattr(3), customizable_types(5), fixfiles(8), restorecon(8), restorecon_xattr(8), selinux(8)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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