Process Capabilities

Understand the Linux process capabilities restrictions with Talos Linux.

Linux defines a set of process capabilities that can be used to fine-tune the process permissions.

Talos Linux for security reasons restricts any process from gaining the following capabilities:

• CAP_SYS_MODULE (loading kernel modules)
• CAP_SYS_BOOT (rebooting the system)

This means that any process including privileged Kubernetes pods will not be able to get these capabilities.

If you see the following error on starting a pod, make sure it doesn’t have any of the capabilities listed above in the spec:

Error: failed to create containerd task: failed to create shim task: OCI runtime create failed: runc create failed: unable to start container process: unable to apply caps: operation not permitted: unknown

Note: even with CAP_SYS_MODULE capability, Linux kernel module loading is restricted by requiring a valid signature. Talos Linux creates a throw away signing key during kernel build, so it’s not possible to build/sign a kernel module for Talos Linux outside of the build process.