The problem with SELinux is that it's disabled by default on many distros. If you follow guides online that weren't written for a SELinux-enabled Linux install then it won't work.
To make matters worse SELinux-related errors can be pretty arcane if you don't know what's going on. I'm usually a FreeBSD guy but I had to setup a CentOS 7 box a little while ago. I thought I was going insane when I couldn't get nginx to connect to a unix domain socket. After a hour of hair pulling and non-conclusive googling I finally understood that it was SELinux related.
I will admit that after that I simply disabled SELinux and never looked back. The benefits didn't seem worth the hassle to me.
If I want additional security and sandboxing I'd sooner use something like FreeBSD/solaris jails. It's not exactly the same thing of course but I find the mental model a lot simpler ("a machine within a machine") than SELinux's complicated and (IMO) hard-to-debug rules.
To make matters worse SELinux-related errors can be pretty arcane if you don't know what's going on. I'm usually a FreeBSD guy but I had to setup a CentOS 7 box a little while ago. I thought I was going insane when I couldn't get nginx to connect to a unix domain socket. After a hour of hair pulling and non-conclusive googling I finally understood that it was SELinux related.
I will admit that after that I simply disabled SELinux and never looked back. The benefits didn't seem worth the hassle to me.
If I want additional security and sandboxing I'd sooner use something like FreeBSD/solaris jails. It's not exactly the same thing of course but I find the mental model a lot simpler ("a machine within a machine") than SELinux's complicated and (IMO) hard-to-debug rules.