Libvirt provides a portable, long term stable C API for managing the virtualization technologies provided by many operating systems. It includes support for QEMU, KVM, Xen, LXC, bhyve, Virtuozzo, VMware vCenter and ESX, VMware Desktop, Hyper-V, VirtualBox and the POWER Hypervisor.
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Daniel P. Berrangé 1902356231 qemu: keep capabilities when running QEMU as root
When QEMU uid/gid is set to non-root this is pointless as if we just
used a regular setuid/setgid call, the process will have all its
capabilities cleared anyway by the kernel.

When QEMU uid/gid is set to root, this is almost (always?) never
what people actually want. People make QEMU run as root in order
to access some privileged resource that libvirt doesn't support
yet and this often requires capabilities. As a result they have
to go find the qemu.conf param to turn this off. This is not
viable for libguestfs - they want to control everything via the
XML security label to request running as root regardless of the
qemu.conf settings for user/group.

Clearing capabilities was implemented originally because there
was a proposal in Fedora to change permissions such that root,
with no capabilities would not be able to compromise the system.
ie a locked down root account. This never went anywhere though,
and as a result clearing capabilities when running as root does
not really get us any security benefit AFAICT. The root user
can easily do something like create a cronjob, which will then
faithfully be run with full capabilities, trivially bypassing
the restriction we place.

IOW, our clearing of capabilities is both useless from a security
POV, and breaks valid use cases when people need to run as root.

This removes the clear_emulator_capabilities configuration
option from qemu.conf, and always runs QEMU with capabilities
when root.  The behaviour when non-root is unchanged.

Reviewed-by: Cole Robinson <crobinso@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
2019-12-11 16:01:20 +00:00
.ctags.d maint: Add support for .ctags.d 2019-05-31 17:54:28 +02:00
.gnulib@1f6fb368c0 maint: Improve use of configmake.h on mingw 2019-08-19 17:04:05 -05:00
build-aux syntax-check: update strcase check to refer to GLib 2019-12-10 14:08:53 +01:00
ci ci: Stop using --workdir 2019-08-21 18:58:34 +02:00
docs qemu: keep capabilities when running QEMU as root 2019-12-11 16:01:20 +00:00
examples Add 'backup' block job type 2019-12-10 12:41:57 +01:00
gnulib maint: Fix VPATH build 2019-01-07 21:56:16 -06:00
include/libvirt Add 'backup' block job type 2019-12-10 12:41:57 +01:00
m4 docs: introduce rst2man as a mandatory tool for building docs 2019-12-11 14:28:41 +00:00
po qemu: Implement backup job APIs and qemu handling 2019-12-10 12:41:58 +01:00
scripts scripts: ignore remote protocol checks if pdwtags crashes 2019-12-06 17:25:23 +00:00
src qemu: keep capabilities when running QEMU as root 2019-12-11 16:01:20 +00:00
tests qemu: block: store the delete flag in libvirtd's status XML 2019-12-11 08:40:18 +01:00
tools docs: remove build recipes related to pod2man usage 2019-12-11 14:28:41 +00:00
.color_coded.in Add color_coded support 2017-05-09 09:51:11 +02:00
.ctags ctags: Generate tags for headers, i.e. function prototypes 2018-09-18 14:21:33 +02:00
.dir-locals.el
.editorconfig Add .editorconfig 2019-09-06 12:47:46 +02:00
.gitignore src: remote: generate source files into build directory 2019-11-08 17:07:57 +01:00
.gitlab-ci.yml gitlab: Adapt to container name changes 2019-08-20 13:08:42 +02:00
.gitmodules gnulib: switch to use https:// instead of git:// protocol 2018-03-19 16:32:34 +00:00
.gitpublish git: add config file telling git-publish how to send patches 2018-04-23 11:36:09 +01:00
.mailmap mailmap: Remove some duplicates 2019-06-07 13:18:08 +02:00
.travis.yml docs: introduce rst2html as a mandatory tool for building docs 2019-12-04 15:48:28 +00:00
.ycm_extra_conf.py.in Add YouCompleteMe support 2017-05-09 09:51:11 +02:00
ABOUT-NLS po: provide custom make rules for po file management 2018-04-19 10:35:58 +01:00
AUTHORS.in AUTHORS: Add Katerina Koukiou 2018-07-17 17:01:19 +02:00
autogen.sh po: provide custom make rules for po file management 2018-04-19 10:35:58 +01:00
bootstrap maint: update gnulib for syntax-check on BSD 2019-01-07 13:54:07 -06:00
bootstrap.conf bootstrap.conf: drop usage of c-strcase gnulib module 2019-12-10 14:08:55 +01:00
ChangeLog maint: Stop generating ChangeLog from git 2019-04-03 09:45:25 +02:00
config-post.h nss: only link to yajl library and nothing else 2019-08-07 16:54:02 +01:00
configure.ac tests: use PYTHON detected from configure 2019-12-10 09:55:45 -05:00
COPYING maint: follow recommended practice for using LGPL 2013-05-20 14:15:21 -06:00
COPYING.LESSER maint: Remove control characters from LGPL license file 2015-09-25 09:16:24 +02:00
gitdm.config gitdm: add 'ibm' file 2019-10-18 17:32:52 +02:00
GNUmakefile build: merge all syntax-check logic into one file 2019-10-09 13:36:54 +01:00
libvirt-admin.pc.in Add libvirt-admin library 2015-06-16 13:46:20 +02:00
libvirt-lxc.pc.in Add pkg-config files for libvirt-qemu & libvirt-lxc 2014-06-23 16:17:27 +01:00
libvirt-qemu.pc.in Add pkg-config files for libvirt-qemu & libvirt-lxc 2014-06-23 16:17:27 +01:00
libvirt.pc.in Add pkg-config files for libvirt-qemu & libvirt-lxc 2014-06-23 16:17:27 +01:00
libvirt.spec.in docs: remove build recipes related to pod2man usage 2019-12-11 14:28:41 +00:00
Makefile.am tests: rewrite test argv line wrapper in Python 2019-12-04 13:44:15 +00:00
Makefile.nonreentrant Remove backslash alignment attempts 2017-11-03 13:24:12 +01:00
mingw-libvirt.spec.in spec: Update Fedora minimum supported version 2019-12-11 13:07:04 +01:00
README Provide a useful README file 2017-05-22 17:01:37 +01:00
README-hacking build: mandate use of a build dir != src dir 2019-11-08 17:07:35 +01:00
README.md build: mandate use of a build dir != src dir 2019-11-08 17:07:35 +01:00
run.in util: activate directory override when used from library 2019-09-10 11:03:35 +01:00

Build Status CII Best Practices

Libvirt API for virtualization

Libvirt provides a portable, long term stable C API for managing the virtualization technologies provided by many operating systems. It includes support for QEMU, KVM, Xen, LXC, bhyve, Virtuozzo, VMware vCenter and ESX, VMware Desktop, Hyper-V, VirtualBox and the POWER Hypervisor.

For some of these hypervisors, it provides a stateful management daemon which runs on the virtualization host allowing access to the API both by non-privileged local users and remote users.

Layered packages provide bindings of the libvirt C API into other languages including Python, Perl, PHP, Go, Java, OCaml, as well as mappings into object systems such as GObject, CIM and SNMP.

Further information about the libvirt project can be found on the website:

https://libvirt.org

License

The libvirt C API is distributed under the terms of GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 (or later). Some parts of the code that are not part of the C library may have the more restrictive GNU General Public License, version 2.0 (or later). See the files COPYING.LESSER and COPYING for full license terms & conditions.

Installation

Libvirt uses the GNU Autotools build system, so in general can be built and installed with the usual commands, however, we mandate to have the build directory different than the source directory. For example, to build in a manner that is suitable for installing as root, use:

$ mkdir build && cd build
$ ../configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
$ make
$ sudo make install

While to build & install as an unprivileged user

$ mkdir build && cd build
$ ../configure --prefix=$HOME/usr
$ make
$ make install

The libvirt code relies on a large number of 3rd party libraries. These will be detected during execution of the configure script and a summary printed which lists any missing (optional) dependencies.

Contributing

The libvirt project welcomes contributions in many ways. For most components the best way to contribute is to send patches to the primary development mailing list. Further guidance on this can be found on the website:

https://libvirt.org/contribute.html

Contact

The libvirt project has two primary mailing lists:

Further details on contacting the project are available on the website:

https://libvirt.org/contact.html