[Libguestfs] How to use libguestfs access LVM as non-root user?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 10:21:42PM +0800, Qiu Yu wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Following code snippet, running as non-root user, will throw up a
> 'Permission denied' RuntimeError.
> 
> Could someone kindly guide me the correct way to handle LVM disk as
> non-root user?
> 
> import guestfs
> g = guestfs.GuestFS()
> g.add_drive_opts("/dev/vg0/disk1", format="raw")

Libguestfs doesn't do anything different from any other program.  I'm
assuming that /dev/vg0/disk1 isn't accessible by non-root (by anyone)
on your host.

On most Linux distros you can add yourself to the 'disk' group
in order to get access to disk devices:

  # usermod -G disk -a yourusername

You may need to log out and log in again after doing that.

> Cause as http://libguestfs.org homepage claims, "libguestfs
> doesn't need root permissions."

Right.  This doesn't mean that libguestfs bypasses OS permissions.  It
just means that root isn't required unnecessarily.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
libguestfs lets you edit virtual machines.  Supports shell scripting,
bindings from many languages.  http://libguestfs.org