Permissions

cv4pve-autosnap works through the API, so it can snapshot exactly the guests its account is allowed to see. Use a dedicated user with an API token rather than root@pam.

User and token

Create a user or an API token and assign it the privileges below, on /.

Tokens with privilege separation

A token with privilege separation (the default in the web UI) does not inherit the user’s permissions: grant the role to the token too, or cv4pve-autosnap finds no guests and prints VMs with '…' NOT FOUND.

Privileges

Privilege	On	Used for	Without it
VM.Audit	/vms	Listing the guests, reading their configuration and snapshots	The guest is not selected: VMs with '…' NOT FOUND
VM.Snapshot	/vms	Creating and removing snapshots	The task fails: snap and clean exit with 1
Datastore.Audit	/storage	Storage usage for --max-perc-storage	The storage check is skipped and snapshots are taken anyway, with POSSIBLE PROBLEM PERMISSION 'Datastore.Audit'
Pool.Audit	/pool	Resolving --vmid=@pool-…	The pool selects no guests: VMs with '…' NOT FOUND

Pool.Audit is needed only to select guests by pool. On Proxmox VE 8 and earlier the pool list required Pool.Allocate instead (#122). Snapshots with the RAM (--state) need no other privilege.

To limit the tool to some guests, grant VM.Audit and VM.Snapshot on those guests or on a pool (/pool/<name>) instead of /vms.

VM.Snapshot also allows rollback

Proxmox VE lets VM.Snapshot roll a guest back to any of its snapshots, not only create and remove them. cv4pve-autosnap never rolls back, but whoever holds its token can: protect the token like the password of an administrator.

How missing privileges are reported

Proxmox VE answers a request the caller is only partly entitled to by filtering the response, not by failing it. /cluster/resources drops the guests and storages you cannot audit, and the pool list drops the pools. Both return 200 OK, so a filtered result looks exactly like an empty one: a guest missing VM.Audit simply is not selected.

That is why cv4pve-autosnap cannot tell a wrong --vmid from a missing privilege: when nothing is found it prints VMs with '…' NOT FOUND followed by the privileges that may be missing. With VM.Snapshot missing, instead, the request fails outright and the error of Proxmox VE is printed for that guest. See Troubleshooting.