zfs list and non-root user

[Pawel Jakub Dawidek]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 01:41:28PM -0500, Mark Kane wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 11, 2008, at 15:13:16 +0200, Norman Maurer wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > is it normal that I can't do a 'zfs list' ( for example ) as non-root
> > user ? 
> > 
> > $ zfs list
> > internal error: failed to initialize ZFS library
> > 
> > I think there is really a use case for use some zfs commands as
> > non-root user..
> > 
> > Thx
> > Norman
> 
> Hi.
> 
> One way to do this as a non-root user is to add the account to the
> "operator" group. This is what I do on my personal desktop machine
> and it has worked fine, but I understand that may not be best in all
> cases.
> 
> You might also try changing the permissions on /dev/zfs. I don't do
> this method and I'm not sure if it's a proper way, but from trying it
> very briefly it seems to work correctly with the user not in the
> "operator" group.

In Solaris anyone can open /dev/zfs and the kernel side of ZFS decides
if the user has permission to perform some action or not. In FreeBSD we
try to be more careful for now, but it will change soon, once we import
delegated administration functionality.

Although... The error above (failed to initialize ZFS library) most
likely means that zfs.ko module wasn't loaded. zfs(8) tries to do that
automatically, but of course it will only succeed if we are root. In
this case zfs.ko has to be manually loaded by root and then members of
operator group can use zfs(8) command.

-- 
Pawel Jakub Dawidek                       http://www.wheel.pl
pjd at FreeBSD.org                           http://www.FreeBSD.org
FreeBSD committer                         Am I Evil? Yes, I Am!
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 187 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/attachments/20080529/e5651c16/attachment.pgp