[deanhills]

So the internal rescue mode of CentOS is useless, too. Thankfully there was a CentOS 8 ISO available. I mounted it and restarted the VPS. In the CentOS 8 ISO bootloader I could select a option to run a system rescue mode. The rescue mode mounts the installed CentOS into /mnt/sysimage and from there on you can access all files through the rescue sh shell of CentOS 8. I edited /etc/selinux/config (/mnt/sysimage/etc/selinux/config) and set SELINUX to disabled. I saved the file and rebooted the VPS. It started from the installed CentOS 7 and I could login normally in the Linux TTY and also in SSH.

That's about it. SELinux was overly protective and broke pretty much the whole system. To be honest: SELinux is cancer. Not only that NSA was working on it but it's kinda not helpful at all.

Your VPS is working again.

This is brilliant @"Hidden Refuge". MANY THANKS for going above and beyond. This is much appreciated.

I'm going to open another support thread as I can't help wonder whether this could be the issue I've been having with my newly upgraded VPS 9 as well. I don't want to hijack this thread however, so will open a new support thread for it.

@fChk Thank you for your feedback as well.

[rudra]

@fChk
thanks for your post. nowadays, i like selinux to be kept active in warning (permissive) mode. cause i am just afraid that may be full enforce mode will lead to some disaster someday on my online servers when i am not online and some important security update has taken place automatically ( i do set it to auto). this is the first time I'm seeing such issues in this context. may be installing directly from latest original sources would confirm about where the issue crops up from.

do you think selinux policy requires update in such cases ? updating the selinux policy description in /etc/selinux/ could solve such issues ? i was thinking that. thanks

[youssefbasha]

My VPS is fixed, thanks everyone.
@deanhills you can close this thread if you want