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I just switched over from Kubuntu to Feodra KDE Spin. Now, I have an LVM setup where my home partition is on its own volume. I created a user with the same username as the one I had in the last distro. I was dismayed to find out that I couldn't log in. The screen just went blank, then I saw a blinking cursor, and then I was bounced back to the login screen. I tried to login from a tty, which worked, but I got this wonderful message:

-- user: /home/user: change directory failed: Permission denied

Okay. So I logged in as root and tried to chown everything back to user. Nothin' goin'. I chmoded my /home/user directory. Still nothing. I'm officially at a loss as to what I should try next, and I thought you fine folks might help. Here's some information for you:

id -u user 1000 stat /home/user/ File: '/home/user/' Size: 4096 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 directory Device: fd02h/64770d Inode: 11272193 Links: 22 Access: (0700/drwx------) Uid: ( 1000/user) Gid: ( 1000/user) Context: system_u:object_r:unlabeled_t:s0 Access: 2017-06-16 19:42:02.224062623 -0400 Modify: 2017-06-16 19:42:00.651082621 -0400 Change: 2017-06-16 19:42:00.651082621 -0400 Birth: -

It all looks good to me, but what do I know? Strangely enough, when I am logged in as user, I can cd into that directory with no issues.

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    You might, as root, do restorecon -Rv /home. The context should be user_home_dir_t I believe. Commented Jun 17, 2017 at 0:59
  • Do I really do that on /home or do I do it on /home/user? Commented Jun 17, 2017 at 1:08
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    The recursive (-R) parameter will update everything in /home. You can also specify /home/user if you believe other directories in /home are correct. Given that some directories in the user's home dir also have contexts (e.g., .ssh is ssh_home_t), I would keep the -R regardless. Commented Jun 17, 2017 at 1:11
  • By jove, that did it. Write an answer and I'll accept it. I've never really messed with SE Linux, so I would probably have never ever guessed this would be a solution. Commented Jun 17, 2017 at 1:15

1 Answer 1

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Based upon the OP's information (which, btw, was excellent for the question), the SELinux context was incorrect. In the OP's question, the Context showed as:

Context: system_u:object_r:unlabeled_t:s0

However, a home directory should have user_home_dir_t.

To resolve the situation, running restorecon -Rv /home (using /home ensures that home directories for other users are updated; one could fix just the particular users's home dire by restorecon -Rv /home/user) will adjust the situation. The result should be similar to:

File: ‘/home/user’ Size: 4096 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 directory Device: fd00h/64768d Inode: 18642668 Links: 16 Access: (0700/drwx------) Uid: ( 1000/ user) Gid: ( 1000/ user) Context: unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_dir_t:s0 <-- THE CONTEXT Access: 2017-06-16 19:10:34.914968689 -0600 Modify: 2017-06-16 18:30:31.135767008 -0600 Change: 2017-06-16 18:30:31.135767008 -0600 Birth: -

Using the -R would also ensure that directories in the /home/user were properly adjusted. For example the .ssh directory has a context of unconfined_u:object_r:ssh_home_t:s0.

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