Re: Cargo Cult sysadmining

jdow <jdow@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> · Mon, 06 Aug 2012 14:04:29 -0700

On 2012/08/06 13:40, Ian Malone wrote:

On 6 August 2012 21:06, Joe Zeff <joe@xxxxxxx> wrote:

It looks like I may have created a new use of Cargo Cult, based on Cargo
Cult Programming.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming,
http://foldoc.org/cargo+cult)  My thought was that disabling SELinux as a
first step in troubleshooting any and every problem, even when there's no
evidence that it's involved was equivalent to natives in New Guinea creating
mockups of landing strips after WWII thinking that planes filled with cargo
would land there.  Most of your suggestions, although bad ideas in and of
themselves, don't have this (to me) important quality: IMO, to be considered
cargo cult sysadminning, the practice must either have nothing to do with
the problem it's intended to fix (Disabling your firewall because sshd
doesn't start.) or is no longer relevant, such as most instances of
reflexive disabling of SELinux. YMMV, and probably does, but I did think
that I should put my original meaning for the term on the record.

Well, the thing is that SELinux often has effects that aren't
particularly obvious. After upgrading to F15 I found I couldn't log in
without disabling SELinux. At that point you can either try and fix
the problem or ignore it and carry on with SELinux disabled forever,
in doing the latter you haven't understood what's wrong or what other
problems might be involved.

SELinux permissive mode is a better diagnostic than simply turning it off,
too.

{o.o}
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