RHEL SELinux mode causes failure to install Oracle Database in RSA Governance & Lifecycle
2 years ago
Article Number
000071625
Applies To
  • RSA Governance & Lifecycle 8.0.0
  • SecurID Governance & Lifecycle 7.5.2
 
  • When installing RSA Governance & Lifecycle with local RSA-provided Oracle 19c database.
  • When installing a remote RSA-provided Oracle19c  database from the RSA database-only tar file. 
Issue

The installation fails and the following message is logged in the aveksa-install.log:

2023/11/23 17:21:18 CLSRSC-318: Failed to start Oracle OHASD service
... Problem running roothas.pl


Note that this article covers failures during installation of the product.  There are potentially unknown failures that might occur if SELinux is enabled (in Enforcing mode) after installation but these are not covered here.

Cause
The Oracle Database portion of the RSA Governance & Lifecycle installer is unable to complete due to security restrictions imposed by the Red Hat Linux (RHEL) SELinux security mode default being set to Enforcing.  This affects both local and remote RSA-provided Oracle 19c databases.

This is a known limitation of the installers in these versions of RSA Governance & Lifecycle.
Resolution

Full support for installing RSA-provided Oracle database on RHEL with SELinux mode set to Enforcing, is being considered for a future release of the product.

Workaround

At this time RSA recommends that the RHEL hosts intended for use with RSA-provided Oracle Database (local or remote) be configured to set SELinux mode to Permissive, for a successful installation of RSA-provided Oracle Database. (See Notes)

This limitation is only with an RSA-provided Oracle 19c database.  Customers may elect to choose a deployment type that leverages their own Oracle instance or other types of Oracle deployment for Customer-supplied Oracle Database.

Notes

Customers who elect to change the SELinux mode from the default Enforcing to Permissive (or setting SELinux to Disable) should fully review the Red Hat Linux documentation and guidance regarding enabling or disabling of this setting as there are potential security implications regarding changes to this setting after the operating system has been installed which are beyond the scope of this article.

Customers installing AFX on RHEL should also be aware of additional RHEL security requirements for FIPS mode discussed in the following article:
AFX fails to start on RHEL 8.4 and greater in RSA Governance & Lifecycle