Checking the SELinux state programmatically

If the need arises to make an SELinux-aware application, then several languages can be used. The libselinux package usually provides bindings for multiple programming and scripting languages. In the next set of recipes, the C programming language will be used as an example implementation.

The first step to support SELinux in an application is to check the SELinux state. In this recipe, we will show how to create an application that links with the libselinux library and checks the state of SELinux.

Getting ready

As we are going to update a C application, this set of recipes will assume basic knowledge of C programming. An example C application that uses all the input from this (and other) recipes can be found in the download pack of this book.

How to do it…

In order to link with libselinux and to check the current SELinux state, the following set of steps can be used:

1. Create a C application code file and refer to the SELinux header files through a compiler...