failsafe_context(5) — Linux manual page

failsafe_context(5)       SELinux configuration       failsafe_context(5)

NAME         top

       failsafe_context - The SELinux fail safe context configuration
       file

DESCRIPTION         top

       The failsafe_context file allows SELinux-aware applications such
       as PAM(8) to obtain a known valid login context for an
       administrator if no valid default entries can be found elsewhere.

       selinux_failsafe_context_path(3) will return the active policy
       path to this file. The default failsafe context file is:
              /etc/selinux/{SELINUXTYPE}/contexts/failsafe_context

       Where {SELINUXTYPE} is the entry from the selinux configuration
       file config (see selinux_config(5)).

       The following functions read this file from the active policy path
       if they cannot obtain a default context:
              get_default_context(3)
              get_ordered_context_list(3)
              get_ordered_context_list_with_level(3)
              get_default_context_with_level(3)
              get_default_context_with_role(3)
              get_default_context_with_rolelevel(3)
              query_user_context(3)
              manual_user_enter_context(3)

FILE FORMAT         top

       The file consists of a single line entry as follows:
              role:type[:range]

       Where:
              role type range
                     A role, type and optional range (for MCS/MLS),
                     separated by colons (:) to form a valid login
                     process context for an administrator to access the
                     system.

EXAMPLE         top

       # ./contexts/failsafe_context
       unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0

SEE ALSO         top

       selinux(8), selinux_failsafe_context_path(3), PAM(8),
       selinux_default_type_path(3), get_default_context(3),
       get_ordered_context_list(3),
       get_ordered_context_list_with_level(3),
       get_default_context_with_level(3),
       get_default_context_with_role(3),
       get_default_context_with_rolelevel(3), query_user_context(3),
       manual_user_enter_context(3), selinux_config(5)

COLOPHON         top

       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
       man-pages@man7.org

Security Enhanced Linux        28-Nov-2011            failsafe_context(5)

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