Re: [RFC PATCH] kvm: Enable -cpu option to hide KVM

Alex Williamson
2014-06-02T13:30:32Z

On Mon, 2014-06-02 at 14:32 +0400, Michael Tokarev wrote:
> 01.06.2014 20:25, Alex Williamson цкщеу:
> > The latest Nvidia driver (337.88) specifically checks for KVM as the
> > hypervisor and reports Code 43 for the driver in a Windows guest when
> > found. Removing or changing the KVM signature is sufficient to allow
> > the driver to load.
>
> Hmm.. Why does it do such thing? Is it in order to prevent the driver
> to work in a virtualized windows, ie to prevent vga passthough to work?
>
> If that's the case, I think it is a lost game. Because they'll be adding
> more, cleverer, checks in the next version.

Then they'll be pissing off more users and driving them to AMD by doing
so. In any case, having the ability to hide the hypervisor seems to
stand on it's own. What if we want to test whether a guest behavior is
the result of a paravirtual interface? What if a user wants to hide the
hypervisor in order to further reduce the exposure surface to the VM?
There are reasons beyond an arms race with Nvidia to want a feature like
this. Thanks,

Alex