Re: [PATCH/RFC 7/9] Virtual network guest device driver

Avi Kivity
2007-05-22T05:17:13Z

Anthony Liguori wrote:
>>
>> In a PV environment why not just pass an initial cookie/hash/whatever
>> as a command-line argument/register/memory-space to the underlying
>> kernel?
>>
>
> You can't pass a command line argument to Windows (at least, not easily
> AFAIK). You could get away with an MSR/CPUID flag but then you're
> relying on uniqueness which isn't guaranteed.
>

In the general case, you can't pass a command line argument to Linux
either. kvm doesn't boot Linux; it boots the bios, which boots the boot
sector, which boots grub, which boots Linux. Relying on the user to
edit the command line in grub is wrong.

--
Do not meddle in the internals of kernels, for they are subtle and quick to panic.