/dev/kvm permissions

Richard W.M. Jones rjones at redhat.com
Mon Jun 18 19:20:30 UTC 2007


Andras Simon wrote:
> When starting qemu-kvm as an ordinary user, I get
> 
> open /dev/kvm: Permission denied
> Could not initialize KVM, will disable KVM support
> 
> Does that mean that it should be run by root (scary!) or that
> /dev/kvm's permissions should be fixed? If the latter, does a simple
> chmod suffice, or should one tamper with udev rules?

KVM allows the user opening the device to arbitrarily lock large amounts 
of RAM so that it can't be swapped.  That's normally something you don't 
want ordinary users to be doing ...

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.kvm.devel/3770 has more 
information.

(Thanks to Dan Berrange who helped me to answer this question).

Rich.

-- 
Emerging Technologies, Red Hat - http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/
Registered Address: Red Hat UK Ltd, Amberley Place, 107-111 Peascod
Street, Windsor, Berkshire, SL4 1TE, United Kingdom.  Registered in
England and Wales under Company Registration No. 03798903
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature
Size: 3237 bytes
Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/attachments/20070618/3d883fa5/attachment-0001.bin>


More information about the fedora-list mailing list