Linux 2.6.37 or later provides a SELinux kernel status page; being mostly placed on
/sys/fs/selinux/status entry. It enables userspace applications to mmap this page with read-only mode,
then it informs some status without system call invocations.
In some cases that a userspace application tries to apply heavy frequent access control; such as row-
level security in databases, it will face unignorable cost to communicate with kernel space to check
invalidation of userspace avc.
These functions provides applications a way to know some kernel events without system-call invocation or
worker thread for monitoring.
selinux_status_open() tries to open(2) /sys/fs/selinux/status and mmap(2) it in read-only mode. The file-
descriptor and pointer to the page shall be stored internally; Don't touch them directly. Set 1 on the
fallback argument to handle a case of older kernels without kernel status page support. In this case,
this function tries to open a netlink socket using avc_netlink_open(3) and overwrite corresponding
callbacks (setenforce and policyload). Thus, we need to pay attention to the interaction with these
interfaces, when fallback mode is enabled.
selinux_status_close() unmap the kernel status page and close its file descriptor, or close the netlink
socket if fallbacked.
selinux_status_updated() processes status update events. There are two kinds of status updates.
setenforce events will change the effective enforcing state used within the AVC, and policyload events
will result in a cache flush.
This function returns 0 if there have been no updates since the last call, 1 if there have been updates
since the last call, or -1 on error.
selinux_status_getenforce() returns 0 if SELinux is running in permissive mode, 1 if enforcing mode, or
-1 on error. Same as security_getenforce(3) except with or without system call invocation.
selinux_status_policyload() returns times of policy reloaded on the running system, or -1 on error. Note
that it is not a reliable value on fallback-mode until it receive the first event message via netlink
socket. Thus, don't use this value to know actual times of policy reloaded.
selinux_status_deny_unknown() returns 0 if SELinux treats policy queries on undefined object classes or
permissions as being allowed, 1 if such queries are denied, or -1 on error.
Also note that these interfaces are not thread-safe, so you have to protect them from concurrent calls
using exclusive locks when multiple threads are performing.