Acknowledgments

Everyone who ever wrote a book says it was a lot of work, but as we discovered, you really do not understand how much work until you try. Even with three authors, we could never have finished this book without help from many people. Tresys Technology gave us great latitude to work on this book even to the occasional determent of our "real work." Tresys also generously allowed us to use its training materials as the basis for most of this book.

Although we (the authors) are actively involved in the development of SELinux, it is truly a community effort. Many, many people contributed to this book indirectly through their active involvement in the SELinux open source community. Chief among this community is Stephen "Smoogle" Smalley, who is truly an amazing engineer. Not only is he the heart of the SELinux development community, he finds a way (and time!) to be highly active in all aspects of the constantly expanding SELinux development projects. Our most common way to understand some "subtle nuance in SELinux" was to "ask Steve."

Stephen, along with two colleagues from Tresys, Christopher Pebenito and Joshua Brindle, provided invaluable insights through their detailed reviews of our manuscript. We would also like to thank Arnold Robbins, the series editor for this book, for his insightful comments from an engineer not immersed in the SELinux community. Much of this book is based on various training materials we've developed at Tresys over the years. Contributors to these materials include James Athey, Chad Sellers, Spencer Shimko, Christopher Pebenito, and Joshua Brindle. We would also like to thank all the engineers who sat through any of these training seminars for their useful feedback.

We would especially like to thank Catherine Nolan, our editor at Pearson Education, who enthusiastically started this project and remained committed through our many outline and schedule changes. Denise Mickelsen, editorial assistant, also did a great job helping us through the final stages of publication. We would also like to thank the rest of the team at Pearson Education including Suzette Ciancio and Heather Fox (marketing team), Gina Kanouse (Production supervisor), and Alan Clements (cover design).

Finally, we would especially recognize our loving families, our wives Barbara, Sawyer, and Kimberly, and our children Alexandra, Jessica, Samuel, and Rachel. We love you all for the support and encouragement you gave us (and the missing nights and weekends you allowed us).