Prowling around in the system logs this morning I discover the following entries:

May 27 09:48:27 vhost01 mcelog: Cannot open logfile /var/log/mcelog: Permission denied May 27 09:48:27 vhost01 mcelog: failed to prefill DIMM database from DMI data May 27 09:48:27 vhost01 mcelog: Cannot bind to client unix socket `/var/run/mcel og-client': Permission denied

and later:

vhost01 setroubleshoot: SELinux is preventing /usr/sbin/mcelog from write access on the directory /var/run. For complete SELinux messages. run sealert -l 548d9d71-bac3-41eb-aa30-9b40e3f2a324

sealert -l 548d9d71-bac3-41eb-aa30-9b40e3f2a324 SELinux is preventing /usr/sbin/mcelog from write access on the directory /var/run.

***** Plugin catchall (100. confidence) suggests ***************************

If you believe that mcelog should be allowed write access on the run directory by default. Then you should report this as a bug. You can generate a local policy module to allow this access. Do allow this access for now by executing: # grep mcelog /var/log/audit/audit.log | audit2allow -M mypol # semodule -i mypol.pp

This seems to my mind a bug either with the distributed SELinux policies or the software itself or somehow something has become very, very misconfigured. However, an semodule -l does not reveal any local policies installed on this server, so whatever is wrong it does not seem likely that the cause was a local modification.