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Description of problem:

In order to run multiple instances of Tomcat on a single machine, the following article recommends labelling the /var/lib/tomcats directory with tomcat_var_lib_t. Without this, Tomcat cannot start due to permission denied errors.

Here is the article: https://access.redhat.com/solutions/2386441

Here are the recommended commands from the article:

  $ sudo semanage fcontext -a -t tomcat_var_lib_t  "/var/lib/tomcats(/.*)?" 
  $ sudo restorecon -R -v /var/lib/tomcats

After discussing with other engineers, the tomcat_var_lib_t context may be a bit too liberal, as it allows read/write access to the directory; see below.

  allow tomcat_t tomcat_var_lib_t : file { ioctl read write create getattr setattr lock append unlink link rename open } ; 
  allow tomcat_t tomcat_var_lib_t : dir { ioctl read write create getattr setattr lock unlink link rename add_name remove_name reparent search rmdir open } ;

Note that this currently applies to scenarios where the RHEL tomcat package is used, and multiple instances need to be running on one server.

The article referred to expects there were multiple directories serving different purpose created:

/var/lib/tomcats/instance1/{logs,temp,webapps,work,conf}

While tomcat_var_lib_t context would work for the tomcat_t domain process accessing files in this directory tree in terms of not producing AVC denials, there should be more confined context considered for the subdirectories, like tomcat_log_t for logs, tomcat_tmp_t for temp files etc., but this should rather be clarified with tomcat developers.

Since the problem described in this bug report should be
resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a
resolution of ERRATA.

For information on the advisory, and where to find the updated
files, follow the link below.

If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report.

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2018:3111