I’ve recently switched all my Macs to use Fedora Workstation instead of MacOS. So far it’s been a pretty joyous experience. My only real sticking point is getting the Brother QL-570 label printer to work.
The Brother website provides explicit Linux support so I thought I’d be OK. There is a driver and a cups wrapper package to be downloaded. After installing both I can add the printer. Printing a test page generates notifications the print has been sent and a subsequent notification printing has finished. However, nothing actually comes out of the printer.
I don’t know about the software you’re being asked to install, but it’s probably safe to install. However, I’m more than a little bit worried by them telling you to disable SELinux, apparently permanently. SELinux is a major part of the software that keeps your system safe and you should think long and hard before disabling it like that. Read the Wikipedia article on it and decide for yourself, but don’t just do it blindly. Yes, there are times you need to disable it in order to install something, but generally, you can re-enable it once it’s installed. Any time a third-party package expects you to disable it forever should raise a Big Red Flag in your mind and you should be wondering just what it needs to do that it can’t do any other way.
The bit about SELinux was probably the main reason to give me pause. My wording of that may be a little misleading now I read it again. The actual recommendation is to:
“SELinux configuration is required.
e.g. Set selinux “premissive mode” by the command “# setenforece 0” (superuser authorization is required)”
I’m assuming they mean just to do the install… By your comment it sounds like this request is not that unusual?
Disabling selinux (setting it in permissive mode) is quite common when installing 3rd party software.
The command setenforce 0 is only temporary and remains effective until changed by the user or rebooting.
It might be wise to also run restorecon -R / after doing the install to ensure the newly installed files are properly labeled with context. This really should not be necessary when in permissive mode since everything selinux related still occurs except the blocking of actions that might be done when in enforcing mode. (Files are still labeled, warnings sent, etc., it is just the prevention of actions that is inhibited)
Thanks for the additional info. Learning a little about about SELinux as part of this process…
The Brother Support guys have come back with an additional FAQ - Disable or reconfigure SELinux. (Linux®) | Brother with directions in the vein of what you are suggesting to manually update the security labels on the files installed by the 2 packages and then run restorecon * in the affected directories.
The only defect in this advice is that the file locations in the FAQ do not exist in my system.
If anyone else is following this thread in the future… It looks like the package now installs files to