[collectd] [Bug 734179] collectd runs as root unnecessarily

[Bruno Prémont]

On Thu, 17 March 2011 Florian Forster <octo at collectd.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 07:04:39AM -0000, Andrew Yates wrote:
> > (It might also be a good idea to run collectd as an unprivileged user
> > by default. A quick test suggests that of the default plugins only
> > 'df' may require root privileges.)
> 
> In the vast majority of cases, the "df" plugin doesn't need privileges.
> The only problematic case I can think of right now is if some file
> system is mounted at "/secret/foo" and the unprivileged user isn't
> allowed to read "/secret".
> 
> Plugins which do require privileges can be found in the collectd wiki in
> the "Plugins requiring privileges" category [0].
> 
> [0] <http://collectd.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Plugins_requiring_privileges>

From those I'm wondering what special privileges netlink plugin needs...
on the systems I run it on, it runs as unprivileged user.

For DNS, Ping and IPTables plugins just setting the appropriate
capabilities, e.g. using file based capabilities, does suffice.
For serial I would say adding the right group should do it as well.

At least file based capabilities and unprivileged user does work fine for me
with ping plugin.


Bruno