devcontainers / devcontainers/cli

Podman: SELinux detection fails when VS Code runs inside Flatpak (label=disable needed)

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#1,071 2 comments 0 reactions 1 assignee Claimed by @v-Kaniska244 View on GitHub
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Description

Description

When using VS Code with Podman + SELinux, VS Code currently detects an SELinux-enabled environment by calling getenforce and checking .Host.Security.SELinuxEnabled. If VS Code is running inside a Flatpak, getenforce inside the Flatpak returns **"Disabled"** even though the host is **"Enforcing"**. That makes VS Code think SELinux is not enabled and it does not pass label=disable, causing permission/SELinux denial issues when building containers with features. If I manually make getenforce return **"Enforcing"** inside the Flatpak, detection succeeds and the container build works.

Environment
- Host OS: Fedora (or another SELinux‑enforcing distribution).
- VS Code as Flatpak: com.visualstudio.code + com.visualstudio.code.tool.podman.
- Podman version: 5.6.1
- VS Code version: 1.102.1

Steps to reproduce
1. Click "Dev Containers: Reopen in Container" from VS Code.

Actual behavior
- Inside a Flatpak sandbox, getenforce reports **Disabled** and detection fails, so label=disable is not set and builds fail.

Expected behavior
- VS Code should correctly detect the host SELinux state when running inside Flatpak sandboxes and pass label=disable when necessary to avoid SELinux denial issues with Podman.

Suggested fixes / discussion
- Consider additional detection strategies when running inside Flatpak.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Assessment

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