[R] joined R-today

[Marc Schwartz]

Bala,

I would not advocate disabling SELinux entirely to resolve this issue.  
SELinux is one of the key security features of Fedora Linux and some  
other Linux distributions that have adopted it. It has already been  
demonstrated to be robust with respect to so-called zero-day attacks.

I would first look to take a more surgical approach to resolve this  
particular issue with this package. Using the SETroubleshoot daemon is  
the easiest way to accomplish this as it will provide specific  
instructions.

As with any security approach, there are trade-offs between security  
and usability, but SELinux as a mandatory access control system is  
well worthwhile keeping in place.

BTW, as a future reference, there is a r-sig-fedora list:

   https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-fedora

HTH,

Marc


On Apr 21, 2009, at 9:56 AM, Bala subramanian wrote:

> Dear Marc and Peter,
>
> Thank you so much. In fact disabling  the SElinux solved the problem.
>
> Bala
>
> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 4:43 PM, Marc Schwartz  
> <marc_schwartz at me.com> wrote:
>
> On Apr 21, 2009, at 9:28 AM, Peter Dalgaard wrote:
>
> Bala subramanian wrote:
> Hi,
> I tried to install from four different mirrors. The result is the  
> same. I
> dnt understand what the following error means.
> /usr/lib/R/library/ncdf/libs/ncdf.so: cannot restore segment prot  
> after
> reloc: Permission denied
> Error in library(ncdf) : .First.lib failed for 'ncdf'
>
> I even tried to change the permission of ncdf.so but still i am not  
> able to
> load the library.
>
>
> Nothing to do with the download. I think SElinux is getting in your  
> way
> (so your unstated system could be RedHat Enterprise Linux?).
>
> Contact your sysadm or google for the error message.
>
> (One of the hits suggests that you might need to run
>
> chcon -t texrel_shlib_t ncdf.so
>
> but, well, no warranties...)
>
> The OP did indicate that F10 was the platform:
>
>  https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/attachments/20090421/65ee5d6e/attachment.pl
>
> so I would agree here that SELinux is almost certainly the culprit  
> as it does control relocation.
>
> If you have the SE Troubleshoot daemon running, you should get a  
> yellow star/badge symbol on one of your desktop dock panels.  
> Typically, if you click on this, it will bring up a dialog window  
> that will have some specific suggestions for resolving the problem.  
> You can see some visual examples here:
>
>  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Design/SETroubleshootUsabilityImprovements
>
> More info on SETroubleshoot here:
>
>  https://fedorahosted.org/setroubleshoot/
>
> HTH,
>
> Marc Schwartz
>
>