Can't write something in data_dir(/var/lib/vector/) with 'Permission Denied'

[JayJay-K]

I'm trying to deploy vector on the kubernetes environment.
But I got a 'Permission Denied' error.

This is my config file, values-vector.yaml

# values-vector.yaml
role: "Agent"

tolerations:
  - operator: Exists

service:
  ports:
    - name: prom-exporter
      port: 9598

containerPorts:
  - name: prom-exporter
    containerPort: 9598
    protocol: TCP

customConfig:
  sources:
    tet_in:
      type: file
      include:
      - /var/run/cilium/tetragon/tetragon.log

  sinks:
    out:
      inputs:
        - tet_in
      type: console
      encoding:
         codec: text

I tried to install it with command

$ helm upgrade --install vector ./helm/vector --values ./helm/vector/values-vector.yaml -n tetns
(I extracted vector-0.52.0.tgz to the ./helm/vector)

This is a result of pod list:

$ kubectl -n tetns get pod
NAME                                READY   STATUS             RESTARTS        AGE
tetragon-6j9fx                      2/2     Running            0               11d
tetragon-operator-84b7df4c4-wrscf   1/1     Running            0               11d
vector-zvsvs                        0/1     CrashLoopBackOff   5 (2m25s ago)   5m23s

And I saw error from vector log:

$ kubectl -n tetns logs -f daemonset/vector
Found 17 pods, using pod/vector-t8mr5
2026-05-14T22:24:22.683350Z  INFO vector::app: Log level is enabled. level="info"
2026-05-14T22:24:22.700302Z  INFO vector::app: Loading configs. paths=["/etc/vector"]
2026-05-14T22:24:22.703295Z ERROR vector::topology::builder: Configuration error. error=Source "tet_in": Could not create subdirectory "tet_in" inside of data dir "/var/lib/vector/": Read-only file system (os error 30) internal_log_rate_limit=false

I searched solution for this error, and I realized I can set "readOnly: false" for /var/lib in values.yaml.
After setting it, log message changed like a:

$ kubectl -n tetns logs -f daemonset/vector
2026-05-18T06:21:07.316144Z  INFO vector::app: Log level is enabled. level="info"
2026-05-18T06:21:07.321711Z  INFO vector::app: Loading configs. paths=["/etc/vector"]
2026-05-18T06:21:07.327139Z ERROR vector::topology::builder: Configuration error. error=Source "tet_in": Could not create subdirectory "tet_in" inside of data dir "/var/lib/vector/": Permission denied (os error 13) internal_log_rate_limit=false

For the previous discussions:

• I saw ""/var/lib/vector/": Read-only file system (os error 30)  helm-charts#226", but it didn't work for me.
  vector couldn't even make a dir /vector-data-dir in the host path.
• I saw "What is data_dir? Should the user create it? #19123" but I couldn't change owner as vector:vector.
  because, host doesn't have user and group with 'vector'.

And I stucked in this problem.
Could you someone please give some advice for this problem?

Thanks.

[JayJay-K]

I found solution with "vectordotdev/helm-charts#266"
I'm working on openshift and followings are what I did.

1. Give privileged SCC to all vector service-accounts:

oc adm policy add-scc-to-user privileged -z vector -n tetns
oc adm policy add-scc-to-user privileged -z vector-configcheck -n tetns

2. Set "privileged: true" for securityContext:

# in the values.yaml in helm-chart
securityContext:
  privileged: true

Thanks.