Re: [Libvir] libvirt daemon UNIX socket auth with PolicyKit

Currently our authentication model for local connections is using the basic UNIX file permissions, possibly with a setuid helper (in Xen case only). It can be summarized as - If app using libvirt is running as root => full access - Else => read only access The latter is enforced by fact that in Xen case libvirt_proxy only has impl for a handful of read only APIs, or in non-Xen case that the UNIX domain socket for the daemon /var/run/libvirt/libvirt-sock is mode 0700, while /var/run/libvirt/libvirt-sock-ro is 0777 & the daemon enforces based on which socket the client connects to. This is good because it allows non-root to at least monitor guest state while requiring root authentication for actually changing state. This is bad because it requires any app which wants to change state to run as root. ie we are required to launch virt-manager as root to gain ability to manage local guests. Problem with this include: - running the entire PyGTK & GTK & X codebase as root is undesirable - no integration with the DBus desktop session (gnome-vfs integartion) - no integration with the GNOME keyring (for VNC server passwords) - redundant (&dangerous) if all you want to do is manage remote libvirt hosts In summary what I really need for virt-manager is - Always run as non-root - Authenticate for local guest management (ie read+write) UNIX domain sockets already provide a way for each end to identify the PID and UID of the other end. This enables the libvirt daemon to determine the identity of the application on the other end. With this information the daemon merely needs to check this identity against some access control policy rules. Where to get/define these rules though ?