Hi Martin, thanks for the explanation. Now I understand why libvirt doesn't revert the file permissions back to the original. I am running these VMs on an isolated test machine, so I'll disable dynamic file ownership and make sure libvirt has access to image files.
Sorry about the message formatting. I modified settings on my client, hopefully it sends plaintext now. (I'll switch to personal email going forward, as the choice of email clients at work is limited.)
-Joe 
Martin Kletzander ---03/20/2020 04:01:43 PM---On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 03:38:36PM +0000, Joe Muro wrote: >Hi,
From: Martin Kletzander <mkletzan@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: Joe Muro <joemuro@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: libvirt-users@xxxxxxxxxx
Date: 03/20/2020 04:01 PM
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: libvirt dynamic file ownership
On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 03:38:36PM +0000, Joe Muro wrote:
>Hi,
>
Hi, could you please configure your client to send plaintext version as well?
We mainly prefer plaintext on this list ;-)
>I am trying to understand libvirt dynamic ownership behavior. I have a VM that
>uses a qcow2 image with the following permissions:
>
>$ ll t257kvxg-10-20-101-40.qcow2
>-rw-r--r-- 1 jmuro libvirt 2279079936 Mar 20 11:10 t257kvxg-10-20-101-40.qcow2
>
>When I start the domain the permissions are changed:
>
>$ virsh start t257kvxg-10-20-101-40
>Domain t257kvxg-10-20-101-40 started
>$ ll t257kvxg-10-20-101-40.qcow2
>-rw-r--r-- 1 libvirt-qemu libvirt 2279079936 Mar 20 11:18
>t257kvxg-10-20-101-40.qcow2
>
>This is expected behavior based on the settings in /etc/libvirt/qemu.conf:
>
>user = "libvirt-qemu"
>group = "libvirt"
># Whether libvirt should dynamically change file ownership
># to match the configured user/group above. Defaults to 1.
># Set to 0 to disable file ownership changes.
>#dynamic_ownership = 1
>
>However, when I shutdown the domain, the file permissions revert to root.
>
>$ ll t257kvxg-10-20-101-40.qcow2
>-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2282749952 Mar 20 11:20 t257kvxg-10-20-101-40.qcow2
>
>I expect libvirt to revert the file permissions back to the original.
>Otherwise, a regular user would lose ownership of the image file. FWIW: I am
>starting the domain as a non-root user under qemu:///system
>
This has always been the case because the original information is lost (which is
actually not that easy to store properly, race-free, etc.) and the safest way to
make sure nobody accesses the disks (e.g. another domain running under
libvirt-qemu:libvirt, that would get exploited) is to just change it to
root:root. Michal finally managed to make this work, in limited cases, but I
think it landed in 6.1.0, I'm not sure.
Anyway, there are some workarounds you can do:
a) set relabel=no for the disk in the XML (and make sure the VM will be able to
access it),
b) set relabel=no for the whole domain (and make sure the VM will be able to
access everything), or
c) if worse comes to worse, just disable the whole dynamic ownership and handle
it yourself
If possible, try upgrading libvirt and checking if that helps.
>I am running on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) with the following libvirt
>level:
>
>libvirt-clients/focal,now 6.0.0-0ubuntu5 s390x [installed]
>libvirt-daemon-driver-qemu/focal,now 6.0.0-0ubuntu5 s390x [installed,automatic]
>libvirt-daemon-driver-storage-rbd/focal,now 6.0.0-0ubuntu5 s390x
>[installed,automatic]
>libvirt-daemon-system-systemd/focal,now 6.0.0-0ubuntu5 s390x
>[installed,automatic]
>libvirt-daemon-system/focal,now 6.0.0-0ubuntu5 s390x [installed]
>libvirt-daemon/focal,now 6.0.0-0ubuntu5 s390x [installed]
>libvirt-glib-1.0-0/focal,now 2.0.0-2 s390x [installed,automatic]
>libvirt0/focal,now 6.0.0-0ubuntu5 s390x [installed,automatic]
>python3-libvirt/focal,now 6.0.0-0ubuntu3 s390x [installed]
>
>Thanks
>
>-Joe
>
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