Why does iotop/taskstats now only work for the root user ?

Solution Verified - Updated -

Issue

  • Command iotop is only usable by root.
  • When run by regular users it produces a non-intuitive error message
  • It exists in /usr/bin and is in section 1 of the man pages
  • Should non-root users be allowed to use taskstats for collecting information for their own processes ?
  • Is there any other way a local, unprivileged user can gather taskstat information ?
  • I want to use taskstats via netlink interface to read I/O statistics as non-root user.

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 - All architectures

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