CentOS Quick Start Guide

Modifying file context

As mentioned earlier, generally, the parent directory SELinux context is assigned to the newly created file, if it is created using the vim, cp, or touch command.

If a file is moved using the mv command, or copied using the cp -a command, the original SELinux context will remain unchanged.

Often, we need to modify the file context as per the destination directory, so that a process can access the file object when required. In the following sections, we discuss the different utilities that can be used to achieve this.