Unable to start the squid service in Red Hat Satellite 6

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Satellite 6
  • Red Hat Capsule 6

Issue

  • The attempt of starting the squid service fails everytime in Red Hat Satellite 6 . The following messages are being displayed while checking the status of the squid service.

    * squid.service - Squid caching proxy
  Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/squid.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
  Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Wed 2021-10-27 11:47:39 EDT; 3min 24s ago
 Process: 11901 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/squid $SQUID_OPTS -f $SQUID_CONF (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Process: 11895 ExecStartPre=/usr/libexec/squid/cache_swap.sh (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 11904 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

Oct 27 11:47:35 satellite.example.com (squid-1)[12045]: I don't handle this error well!
Oct 27 11:47:35 satellite.example.com squid[11904]: Squid Parent: (squid-1) process 12045 exited with status 1
Oct 27 11:47:38 satellite.example.com squid[11904]: Squid Parent: (squid-1) process 12053 started
Oct 27 11:47:39 satellite.example.com (squid-1)[12053]: I don't handle this error well!
Oct 27 11:47:39 satellite.example.com squid[11904]: Squid Parent: (squid-1) process 12053 exited with status 1
Oct 27 11:47:39 satellite.example.com squid[11904]: Squid Parent: (squid-1) process 12053 will not be restarted due to repeated, frequent failures
Oct 27 11:47:39 satellite.example.com squid[11904]: Exiting due to repeated, frequent failures
Oct 27 11:47:39 satellite.example.com systemd[1]: squid.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Oct 27 11:47:39 satellite.example.com systemd[1]: Unit squid.service entered failed state.
Oct 27 11:47:39 satellite.example.com systemd[1]: squid.service failed.

Resolution

  • Ensure that the directory /var/log/squid and it's underlying files have the correct permissions, ownership and SELinux context set as displayed below.

    # ls -ldZ /var/log/squid /var/log/squid/*
drwxr-x---. squid squid system_u:object_r:squid_log_t:s0 /var/log/squid
-rw-r-----. squid squid system_u:object_r:squid_log_t:s0 /var/log/squid/access.log
-rw-r-----. squid squid unconfined_u:object_r:squid_log_t:s0 /var/log/squid/cache.log
-rw-r--r--. root  root  system_u:object_r:squid_log_t:s0 /var/log/squid/squid.out

    • If the SELinux context of the /var/log/squid directory is found to be set incorrectly, execute the following commands to fix the same and start back the squid service.

      # semanage fcontext -a -t squid_log_t "/var/log/squid(/.*)?"
# restorecon -R -v /var/log/squid
# systemctl restart squid
# systemctl status squid -l

Root Cause

  • An incorrect SELinux context was set to the /var/log/squid/ directory and some of its underlying files.

Diagnostic Steps

  • Following errors were noticed in the /var/log/messages file of the Satellite server while restarting the squid service.

    Oct 29 11:48:17 satellite systemd: Starting Squid caching proxy...
Oct 29 11:48:18 satellite squid: **WARNING: Cannot write log file: /var/log/squid/cache.log**
Oct 29 11:48:18 satellite squid: /var/log/squid/cache.log: Permission denied
Oct 29 11:48:18 satellite squid: messages will be sent to 'stderr'.
Oct 29 11:48:18 satellite kernel: type=1400 audit(1635522498.030:457749): avc:  denied  { read } for  pid=7948 comm="squid" name="cache.log" dev="dm-3" ino=2178 scontext=system_u:system_r:squid_t:s0 tcontext=system_u:object_r:var_log_t:s0 tclass=file permissive=0

  • After investigating the file /var/log/squid/cache.log it was observed that SELinux context for the file was set incorrectly i.e. var_log_t but the expected is squid_log_t .

    # ls -lZ /var/log/squid/cache.log
-rwxrw----. squid squid system_u:object_r:var_log_t:s0   /var/log/squid/cache.log

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