---
title: Grant privileged permissions to Beats
description: Deploying Beats on Openshift may require some privileged permissions. This section describes how to create a ServiceAccount, add the ServiceAccount to...
url: https://www.elastic.co/docs/deploy-manage/deploy/cloud-on-k8s/k8s-openshift-beats
products:
  - Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes
---

# Grant privileged permissions to Beats

Deploying Beats on Openshift may require some privileged permissions. This section describes how to create a ServiceAccount, add the ServiceAccount to the `privileged` SCC, and use it to run Beats.
The following example assumes that Beats is deployed in the Namespace `elastic` with the ServiceAccount `heartbeat`. You can replace these values according to your environment.
<note>
  If you used the examples from the [recipes directory](https://github.com/elastic/cloud-on-k8s/tree/3.2/config/recipes/beats), the ServiceAccount may already exist.
</note>

1. Create a dedicated ServiceAccount:   
   ```shell
   oc create serviceaccount heartbeat -n elastic
   ```
2. Add the ServiceAccount to the required SCC:   
   ```shell
   oc adm policy add-scc-to-user privileged -z heartbeat -n elastic
   ```
3. Update the Beat manifest to use the new ServiceAccount, for example:   
   ```yaml
   apiVersion: beat.k8s.elastic.co/v1beta1
   kind: Beat
   metadata:
     name: heartbeat
   spec:
     type: heartbeat
     version: 9.2.0
     elasticsearchRef:
       name: elasticsearch
     config:
       heartbeat.monitors:
       - type: tcp
         schedule: '@every 5s'
         hosts: ["elasticsearch-es-http.default.svc:9200"]
       - type: tcp
         schedule: '@every 5s'
         hosts: ["kibana-kb-http.default.svc:5601"]
     deployment:
       replicas: 1
       podTemplate:
         spec:
           serviceAccountName: heartbeat
           securityContext:
             runAsUser: 0
   ```

If SELinux is enabled, the Beat Pod might fail with the following message:
```shell
Exiting: Failed to create Beat meta file: open /usr/share/heartbeat/data/meta.json.new: permission denied
```

To fix this error, apply the label `svirt_sandbox_file_t` to the directory `/var/lib/elastic/heartbeat/heartbeat-data/` on the Kubernetes node:
```shell
chcon -Rt svirt_sandbox_file_t /var/lib/elastic/heartbeat/heartbeat-data/
```

Repeat this step on all the hosts where the heartbeat Pod can be deployed.
Some Beats may require additional permissions. For example, `Filebeat` needs additional privileges to read other container logs on the host. In this case, you can use the `privileged` field in the security context of the container spec:
```yaml
apiVersion: beat.k8s.elastic.co/v1beta1
kind: Beat
metadata:
  name: filebeat
spec:
  type: filebeat
...
  daemonSet:
    podTemplate:
      spec:
        serviceAccountName: filebeat
        automountServiceAccountToken: true
...
        containers:
        - name: filebeat
          securityContext:
            runAsUser: 0
            privileged: true
          volumeMounts:
          - name: varlibdockercontainers
            mountPath: /var/lib/docker/containers
        volumes:
        - name: varlibdockercontainers
          hostPath:
            path: /var/lib/docker/containers
```

Check the complete examples in the [recipes directory](https://github.com/elastic/cloud-on-k8s/tree/3.2/config/recipes/beats).