Version v1.8 of the documentation is for the Talos version being developed. For the latest stable version of Talos, see the latest version.

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.