How to Disable/Enable and SELinux on RHEL 6

On test laptops you are not always interesting in having all security enabled, e.g. when developing or testing a applications. And that is true for SELinux.

To see if SELinux is active

$ /usr/sbin/sestatus
SELinux status:                 enabled
SELinuxfs mount:                /selinux
Current mode:                   enforcing
Mode from config file:          enforcing
Policy version:                 23
Policy from config file:        targeted

To temporarily disable SELinux - 1 (enable) or 0 (disable).

$ setenforce 0

To permanently disable SELinux, edit /etc/selinux/config and set SELINUX=disabled.

# This file controls the state of SELinux on the system.
# SELINUX= can take one of these three values:
#     enforcing - SELinux security policy is enforced.
#     permissive - SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing.
#     disabled - No SELinux policy is loaded.
#SELINUX=enforcing
SELINUX=disabled
# SELINUXTYPE= can take one of these two values:
#     targeted - Targeted processes are protected,
#     mls - Multi Level Security protection.
SELINUXTYPE=targeted 

After saving you need to reboot your machine.