[virt-tools-list] virt-what -- why root?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 06:05:57PM +0700, Ryan Erwin wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I was using `virt-what` and noticed that you require root before running
> `/usr/lib/virt-what/virt-what-cpuid-helper` however I also noticed that
> directly running the cpuid-helper binary without root it still worked fine
> for me on several machines when I directly run the helper binary.
> 
> What circumstances have you found where cpuid-helper actually does requrie
> root? Is it SELinux related?

virt-what could be run as non-root.  The original reason for requiring
root was so we could run dmidecode (nothing to do with cpuid).
However that information is now available in /sys/firmware and other
places (on Linux at least).  Since no one has done the work, virt-what
still requires root though.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
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