The SELinux support enabled by default in the desktop systems like Fedora Core Linux causes some mysterious file permission errors. If you are unable to execute a file for which you seem to have proper permissions, probably SELinux is in to play. Also it shows some annoying messages on the desktop in the recent distributions. Basically if you encounter some strage file access problems, it is better to disable SELinux and check the same again. For example, when root user attempts to access/execute files which are created as normal user. Another example is sometimes your downloaded PHP/CGI script fails to write a file.

Here is the way to disable SELinux in Fedora systems. But it should be almost the same in other distributions.

Open “/etc/selinux/config” file and change the following line from “enforcing” to “disabled“.

#SELINUX=enforcing
SELINUX=disabled

You should restart the systems once to get the changes in to effect.