[Qemu-devel] SVM emulation: EVENTINJ marked valid when a pagefault happens while issuing a software interrupt

[Qemu-devel] SVM emulation: EVENTINJ marked valid when a pagefault happens while issuing a software interrupt

[Erik van der Kouwe]

Dear all,

I have been experiencing problems with duplicate delivery of software 
interrupts when running a VMM inside QEMU with SVM emulation. I believe 
QEMU's behaviour deviates from the SVM specification in "AMD64 
Architecture Programmer’s Manual Volume 2 System Programming" but I am 
not entirely certain because this specification isn't very clear. I 
would like to hear your views on this.

My set-up is as follows:
Host: Linux 2.6.31-21-generic-pae (Ubuntu 9.10)
VMM running on host: QEMU 0.12.3 (compiled from source)
Outer guest: MINIX 3.1.7 (from SVN, see http://www.minix3.org/)
VMM running on outer guest: Palacios 1.2.0 32-bit (from git, see 
http://www.v3vee.org/palacios/)
Inner guest: MINIX 3.1.7 (from SVN, see http://www.minix3.org/)

The issue is the following: whenever an software interrupt instruction 
(INT n, used in this case to perform a system call) in the inner guest 
triggers a page fault (used for shadow paging by Palacios, not a real 
guest page fault), QEMU sets the EVENTINV field of the guest VMCB to the 
exit information that the software interrupt would produce and marks it 
as valid. Palacios does not overwrite the EVENTINJ field, so after the 
page fault is handled a software interrupt event is injected. After the 
IRET of the interrupt handler, control returns to the original INT n 
instruction which once again triggers the interrupt.

This issue is easy to work around by clearing the EVENTINJ field on each 
#VMEXIT (and I have submitted a patch to that effect to the Palacios 
people) and this approach is also found in KVM.

However, I haven't been able to find information in the AMD 
documentation that mentions that the CPU sets the valid bit in the 
EVENTINJ field so, unless I am mistaken here, I believe this behaviour 
is incorrect. QEMU stores interrupt information in both EVENTINJ and 
EXITINTINFO while I believe it should be only in the latter. 
Unfortunately I don't have a physical AMD available to verify its behaviour.

The relevant code is in target-i386/op_helper.c. The "handle_even_inj" 
function sets the EVENTINJ field (called event_inf in the QEMU code) and 
the helper_vmexit function copies that field into EXITINTINFO 
(exit_int_info in the QEMU code). I believe (but once again, am not 
certain) that the SVM documentation only says that this information 
should be stored in EXITINTINFO.

Thanks in advance for any information,
Erik van der Kouwe

[Qemu-devel] Re: SVM emulation: EVENTINJ marked valid when a pagefault happens while issuing a software interrupt

[Jan Kiszka]

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Erik van der Kouwe wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> I have been experiencing problems with duplicate delivery of software
> interrupts when running a VMM inside QEMU with SVM emulation. I believe

Be warned: Though my experience is already more than a year old, the SVM
emulation in QEMU is most probably not yet rock-stable. Always check
suspicious behavior against real hardware and/or the spec. [ As real
hardware is everywhere, nesting works with KVM+SVM and is much faster,
motivation to improve QEMU in this area is unfortunately limited. ]

> QEMU's behaviour deviates from the SVM specification in "AMD64
> Architecture Programmer’s Manual Volume 2 System Programming" but I am
> not entirely certain because this specification isn't very clear. I
> would like to hear your views on this.
> 
> My set-up is as follows:
> Host: Linux 2.6.31-21-generic-pae (Ubuntu 9.10)
> VMM running on host: QEMU 0.12.3 (compiled from source)
> Outer guest: MINIX 3.1.7 (from SVN, see http://www.minix3.org/)
> VMM running on outer guest: Palacios 1.2.0 32-bit (from git, see
> http://www.v3vee.org/palacios/)
> Inner guest: MINIX 3.1.7 (from SVN, see http://www.minix3.org/)
> 
> The issue is the following: whenever an software interrupt instruction
> (INT n, used in this case to perform a system call) in the inner guest
> triggers a page fault (used for shadow paging by Palacios, not a real
> guest page fault), QEMU sets the EVENTINV field of the guest VMCB to the
> exit information that the software interrupt would produce and marks it
> as valid. Palacios does not overwrite the EVENTINJ field, so after the
> page fault is handled a software interrupt event is injected. After the
> IRET of the interrupt handler, control returns to the original INT n
> instruction which once again triggers the interrupt.
> 
> This issue is easy to work around by clearing the EVENTINJ field on each
> #VMEXIT (and I have submitted a patch to that effect to the Palacios
> people) and this approach is also found in KVM.

/me does not find such clearing in KVM - what line(s) are you looking at?

> 
> However, I haven't been able to find information in the AMD
> documentation that mentions that the CPU sets the valid bit in the
> EVENTINJ field so, unless I am mistaken here, I believe this behaviour
> is incorrect. QEMU stores interrupt information in both EVENTINJ and
> EXITINTINFO while I believe it should be only in the latter.
> Unfortunately I don't have a physical AMD available to verify its
> behaviour.

Based on the KVM code (which is known to work perfectly :) ), I think
you are right: SVM apparently clears the valid bit in EVENTINJ during
VMRUN once it starts processing the injection, not after it as it's the
case in current QEMU. But better ask the experts: Jörg, Gleb?

> 
> The relevant code is in target-i386/op_helper.c. The "handle_even_inj"
> function sets the EVENTINJ field (called event_inf in the QEMU code) and
> the helper_vmexit function copies that field into EXITINTINFO
> (exit_int_info in the QEMU code). I believe (but once again, am not
> certain) that the SVM documentation only says that this information
> should be stored in EXITINTINFO.

Yes, this also looks suspicious. handle_even_inj should not push the
real (level 1) event to be injected into event_inj[_err] but into
exit_int_info[_err] or some temporary fields from which the exit info is
then loaded later on.

Jan


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[Qemu-devel] Re: SVM emulation: EVENTINJ marked valid when a pagefault happens while issuing a software interrupt

[Erik van der Kouwe]

Hi,

> Be warned: Though my experience is already more than a year old, the SVM
> emulation in QEMU is most probably not yet rock-stable. Always check
> suspicious behavior against real hardware and/or the spec. [ As real
> hardware is everywhere, nesting works with KVM+SVM and is much faster,
> motivation to improve QEMU in this area is unfortunately limited. ]

Problem is: I'm compiling in Linux and testing in MINIX. Testing on the 
real hardware would require a reboot everytime. Moreover, it might screw 
up my system if I make bad mistakes (the MINIX filesystem is easily 
corrupted).

That said, I do aim to eventually test the real hardware. Plenty of 
virtualization capable hardware where I work, although unfortunately all 
Intel.

>> This issue is easy to work around by clearing the EVENTINJ field on each
>> #VMEXIT (and I have submitted a patch to that effect to the Palacios
>> people) and this approach is also found in KVM.
> 
> /me does not find such clearing in KVM - what line(s) are you looking at?

Linux source tree (2.6.31-ubuntu), arch/x86/kvm/svm.c, end of function 
nested_svm_vmrun. Here event_inj and event_inj_err are copied from a 
different VMCB, effectively clearing the value set by the CPU. Maybe 
this isn't were I should have been looking though?

>> The relevant code is in target-i386/op_helper.c. The "handle_even_inj"
>> function sets the EVENTINJ field (called event_inf in the QEMU code) and
>> the helper_vmexit function copies that field into EXITINTINFO
>> (exit_int_info in the QEMU code). I believe (but once again, am not
>> certain) that the SVM documentation only says that this information
>> should be stored in EXITINTINFO.
> 
> Yes, this also looks suspicious. handle_even_inj should not push the
> real (level 1) event to be injected into event_inj[_err] but into
> exit_int_info[_err] or some temporary fields from which the exit info is
> then loaded later on.

Yes, if this is indeed incorrect behaviour then this is what I would 
expect a fix to be like.

Thanks again,
Erik

[Qemu-devel] Re: SVM emulation: EVENTINJ marked valid when a pagefault happens while issuing a software interrupt

[Jan Kiszka]

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Erik van der Kouwe wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>> Be warned: Though my experience is already more than a year old, the SVM
>> emulation in QEMU is most probably not yet rock-stable. Always check
>> suspicious behavior against real hardware and/or the spec. [ As real
>> hardware is everywhere, nesting works with KVM+SVM and is much faster,
>> motivation to improve QEMU in this area is unfortunately limited. ]
> 
> Problem is: I'm compiling in Linux and testing in MINIX. Testing on the
> real hardware would require a reboot everytime. Moreover, it might screw
> up my system if I make bad mistakes (the MINIX filesystem is easily
> corrupted).

Use Linux+KVM as host OS, it can also run VMMs as guests (aka nested
SVM). And you could even debug those guests just like when you would run
QEMU in emulation mode. In contrast to SVM emulation, nesting is fairly
stable AFAIK. And it is faster.

> 
> That said, I do aim to eventually test the real hardware. Plenty of
> virtualization capable hardware where I work, although unfortunately all
> Intel.
> 
>>> This issue is easy to work around by clearing the EVENTINJ field on each
>>> #VMEXIT (and I have submitted a patch to that effect to the Palacios
>>> people) and this approach is also found in KVM.
>>
>> /me does not find such clearing in KVM - what line(s) are you looking at?
> 
> Linux source tree (2.6.31-ubuntu), arch/x86/kvm/svm.c, end of function
> nested_svm_vmrun. Here event_inj and event_inj_err are copied from a
> different VMCB, effectively clearing the value set by the CPU. Maybe
> this isn't were I should have been looking though?

Yep. This is the path taken for injecting events when switching from
level-1 to level-2 guests, i.e. you are running some VMM inside KVM.

> 
>>> The relevant code is in target-i386/op_helper.c. The "handle_even_inj"
>>> function sets the EVENTINJ field (called event_inf in the QEMU code) and
>>> the helper_vmexit function copies that field into EXITINTINFO
>>> (exit_int_info in the QEMU code). I believe (but once again, am not
>>> certain) that the SVM documentation only says that this information
>>> should be stored in EXITINTINFO.
>>
>> Yes, this also looks suspicious. handle_even_inj should not push the
>> real (level 1) event to be injected into event_inj[_err] but into
>> exit_int_info[_err] or some temporary fields from which the exit info is
>> then loaded later on.
> 
> Yes, if this is indeed incorrect behaviour then this is what I would
> expect a fix to be like.
> 
> Thanks again,
> Erik

Jan


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[Qemu-devel] Re: SVM emulation: EVENTINJ marked valid when a pagefault happens while issuing a software interrupt

[Erik van der Kouwe]

Hi,

> Use Linux+KVM as host OS, it can also run VMMs as guests (aka nested
> SVM). And you could even debug those guests just like when you would run
> QEMU in emulation mode. In contrast to SVM emulation, nesting is fairly
> stable AFAIK. And it is faster.

In my experience, if I provide the -enable-kvm switch then the guest VMM 
never detects the presence of virtualization support. Does this only 
work on AMD hardware? Or do I need to supply some additional parameter 
to make it work?

With kind regards,
Erik

[Qemu-devel] Re: SVM emulation: EVENTINJ marked valid when a pagefault happens while issuing a software interrupt

[Jan Kiszka]

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Erik van der Kouwe wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>> Use Linux+KVM as host OS, it can also run VMMs as guests (aka nested
>> SVM). And you could even debug those guests just like when you would run
>> QEMU in emulation mode. In contrast to SVM emulation, nesting is fairly
>> stable AFAIK. And it is faster.
> 
> In my experience, if I provide the -enable-kvm switch then the guest VMM
> never detects the presence of virtualization support. Does this only
> work on AMD hardware? Or do I need to supply some additional parameter
> to make it work?

Yes, forgot to mention: -enable-nesting, and you need qemu-kvm. This
feature hasn't been merged upstream yet.

Jan


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[Qemu-devel] Re: SVM emulation: EVENTINJ marked valid when a pagefault happens while issuing a software interrupt

[Roedel, Joerg]

On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 02:53:18PM -0400, Jan Kiszka wrote:
> Based on the KVM code (which is known to work perfectly :) ), I think
> you are right: SVM apparently clears the valid bit in EVENTINJ during
> VMRUN once it starts processing the injection, not after it as it's the
> case in current QEMU. But better ask the experts: Jörg, Gleb?

SVM always clears the vmcb.eventinj on vmrun because every exception is
injected right after vmrun finished and cpu is in guest mode. It can
happen (for example if taking the exception causes a page fault) that
the vmcb.eventinj field is copied to vmcb.exit_int_info.
Also note that at this point there is a difference between hardware svm
and the nested-svm implementation in kvm. The hardware always takes the
exception first before checking for any other intercept condition. This
basically means that exit_int_info is only set when the injected event
could not be delivered due to other conditions in the guest (page
fault, nested page-fault, ...).
In nested-svm you can get a valid exit_int_info when an interrupt or nmi
is pending too. In the software implementation these intercepts are
taken before the event is delivered and you find the event in
vmcb.exit_int_info.
This is not forbidden in the svm architecture and I have not found a
hypervisor that has a problem with this different behavior. I have a
patch here which changes this in nested-svm, but it introduces more
problems than it fixes.

	Joerg

[Qemu-devel] Re: SVM emulation: EVENTINJ marked valid when a pagefault happens while issuing a software interrupt

[Roedel, Joerg]

On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 06:20:00PM -0400, Jan Kiszka wrote:
> Erik van der Kouwe wrote:
> > Problem is: I'm compiling in Linux and testing in MINIX. Testing on the
> > real hardware would require a reboot everytime. Moreover, it might screw
> > up my system if I make bad mistakes (the MINIX filesystem is easily
> > corrupted).
> 
> Use Linux+KVM as host OS, it can also run VMMs as guests (aka nested
> SVM). And you could even debug those guests just like when you would run
> QEMU in emulation mode. In contrast to SVM emulation, nesting is fairly
> stable AFAIK. And it is faster.

At least it is more stable than any other nested-svm implementation I
know of ;-)
There are issues with kvmclock when you run kvm-on-kvm and you should
not expect windows-based hypervisors to run without problems. Beside
that, for running kvm-on-kvm and xen-on-kvm it is indeed fairly
stable :-)

> > Linux source tree (2.6.31-ubuntu), arch/x86/kvm/svm.c, end of function
> > nested_svm_vmrun. Here event_inj and event_inj_err are copied from a
> > different VMCB, effectively clearing the value set by the CPU. Maybe
> > this isn't were I should have been looking though?

The interesting part is in nested_svm_vmexit. There you have this piece
of code:

        /*
         * If we emulate a VMRUN/#VMEXIT in the same host #vmexit cycle we have
         * to make sure that we do not lose injected events. So check event_inj
         * here and copy it to exit_int_info if it is valid.
         * Exit_int_info and event_inj can't be both valid because the case
         * below only happens on a VMRUN instruction intercept which has
         * no valid exit_int_info set.
         */
        if (vmcb->control.event_inj & SVM_EVTINJ_VALID) {
                struct vmcb_control_area *nc = &nested_vmcb->control;

                nc->exit_int_info     = vmcb->control.event_inj;
                nc->exit_int_info_err = vmcb->control.event_inj_err;
        }

and a few lines later:

        nested_vmcb->control.event_inj         = 0;
        nested_vmcb->control.event_inj_err     = 0;

... which takes care of this situation. The vmcb.eventinf field is _defined_ to
be zero on a #vmexit.

	Joerg

[Qemu-devel] Re: SVM emulation: EVENTINJ marked valid when a pagefault happens while issuing a software interrupt

[Roedel, Joerg]

On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 02:10:59AM -0400, Jan Kiszka wrote:
> Erik van der Kouwe wrote:

> > In my experience, if I provide the -enable-kvm switch then the guest VMM
> > never detects the presence of virtualization support. Does this only
> > work on AMD hardware? Or do I need to supply some additional parameter
> > to make it work?
> 
> Yes, forgot to mention: -enable-nesting, and you need qemu-kvm. This
> feature hasn't been merged upstream yet.

And the svm-emulation is only available on AMD hardware.

	Joerg

[Qemu-devel] Re: SVM emulation: EVENTINJ marked valid when a pagefault happens while issuing a software interrupt

[Erik van der Kouwe]

Hi,

Thankss for your answer.

> SVM always clears the vmcb.eventinj on vmrun because every exception is
> injected right after vmrun finished and cpu is in guest mode. It can
> happen (for example if taking the exception causes a page fault) that
> the vmcb.eventinj field is copied to vmcb.exit_int_info.

Yes, this s what I have been experiencing.

> In nested-svm you can get a valid exit_int_info when an interrupt or nmi
> is pending too. In the software implementation these intercepts are
> taken before the event is delivered and you find the event in
> vmcb.exit_int_info.
> This is not forbidden in the svm architecture and I have not found a
> hypervisor that has a problem with this different behavior. I have a
> patch here which changes this in nested-svm, but it introduces more
> problems than it fixes.

This is a ok, the problem is the event_inj field rather than the 
exit_int_info field. From what I've seen the SVM specification neither 
specifies that the CPU writes to this field nor does it explicitly 
forbid it. Given the unclarity of the specification it may safest to 
deal with this in the same way as the hardware does (although I don't 
know which way this is, it seems inuitively unlikely that the hardware 
would set event_inj to valid).

With kind regards,
Erik

[Qemu-devel] Re: SVM emulation: EVENTINJ marked valid when a pagefault happens while issuing a software interrupt

[Jan Kiszka]

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Roedel, Joerg wrote:
> On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 06:20:00PM -0400, Jan Kiszka wrote:
>> Erik van der Kouwe wrote:
>>> Problem is: I'm compiling in Linux and testing in MINIX. Testing on the
>>> real hardware would require a reboot everytime. Moreover, it might screw
>>> up my system if I make bad mistakes (the MINIX filesystem is easily
>>> corrupted).
>> Use Linux+KVM as host OS, it can also run VMMs as guests (aka nested
>> SVM). And you could even debug those guests just like when you would run
>> QEMU in emulation mode. In contrast to SVM emulation, nesting is fairly
>> stable AFAIK. And it is faster.
> 
> At least it is more stable than any other nested-svm implementation I
> know of ;-)
> There are issues with kvmclock when you run kvm-on-kvm and you should
> not expect windows-based hypervisors to run without problems. Beside
> that, for running kvm-on-kvm and xen-on-kvm it is indeed fairly
> stable :-)
> 
>>> Linux source tree (2.6.31-ubuntu), arch/x86/kvm/svm.c, end of function
>>> nested_svm_vmrun. Here event_inj and event_inj_err are copied from a
>>> different VMCB, effectively clearing the value set by the CPU. Maybe
>>> this isn't were I should have been looking though?
> 
> The interesting part is in nested_svm_vmexit. There you have this piece
> of code:
> 
>         /*
>          * If we emulate a VMRUN/#VMEXIT in the same host #vmexit cycle we have
>          * to make sure that we do not lose injected events. So check event_inj
>          * here and copy it to exit_int_info if it is valid.
>          * Exit_int_info and event_inj can't be both valid because the case
>          * below only happens on a VMRUN instruction intercept which has
>          * no valid exit_int_info set.
>          */
>         if (vmcb->control.event_inj & SVM_EVTINJ_VALID) {
>                 struct vmcb_control_area *nc = &nested_vmcb->control;
> 
>                 nc->exit_int_info     = vmcb->control.event_inj;
>                 nc->exit_int_info_err = vmcb->control.event_inj_err;
>         }
> 
> and a few lines later:
> 
>         nested_vmcb->control.event_inj         = 0;
>         nested_vmcb->control.event_inj_err     = 0;
> 
> ... which takes care of this situation. The vmcb.eventinf field is _defined_ to
> be zero on a #vmexit.

(Hmm, must have missed that line in the spec.)

In that case something like

diff --git a/target-i386/op_helper.c b/target-i386/op_helper.c
index dcbdfe7..caabdb4 100644
--- a/target-i386/op_helper.c
+++ b/target-i386/op_helper.c
@@ -1263,13 +1263,6 @@ void do_interrupt(int intno, int is_int, int error_code,
 #endif
         do_interrupt_real(intno, is_int, error_code, next_eip);
     }
-
-#if !defined(CONFIG_USER_ONLY)
-    if (env->hflags & HF_SVMI_MASK) {
-	    uint32_t event_inj = ldl_phys(env->vm_vmcb + offsetof(struct vmcb, control.event_inj));
-	    stl_phys(env->vm_vmcb + offsetof(struct vmcb, control.event_inj), event_inj & ~SVM_EVTINJ_VALID);
-    }
-#endif
 }
 
 /* This should come from sysemu.h - if we could include it here... */
@@ -5388,6 +5381,7 @@ void helper_vmexit(uint32_t exit_code, uint64_t exit_info_1)
              ldl_phys(env->vm_vmcb + offsetof(struct vmcb, control.event_inj)));
     stl_phys(env->vm_vmcb + offsetof(struct vmcb, control.exit_int_info_err),
              ldl_phys(env->vm_vmcb + offsetof(struct vmcb, control.event_inj_err)));
+    stl_phys(env->vm_vmcb + offsetof(struct vmcb, control.event_inj), 0);
 
     env->hflags2 &= ~HF2_GIF_MASK;
     /* FIXME: Resets the current ASID register to zero (host ASID). */

should resolve the QEMU issue, right?

Jan


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[Qemu-devel] Re: SVM emulation: EVENTINJ marked valid when a pagefault happens while issuing a software interrupt

[Roedel, Joerg]

On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 03:45:09AM -0400, Erik van der Kouwe wrote:
> This is a ok, the problem is the event_inj field rather than the 
> exit_int_info field. From what I've seen the SVM specification neither 
> specifies that the CPU writes to this field nor does it explicitly 
> forbid it. Given the unclarity of the specification it may safest to 
> deal with this in the same way as the hardware does (although I don't 
> know which way this is, it seems inuitively unlikely that the hardware 
> would set event_inj to valid).

The "AMD64 Architecture Programmer's Manual Volume 2" states in section
15.19:

	When an event is injected by means of this mechanism, the VMRUN
	instruction causes the guest to unconditionally take the
	specified exception or interrupt before executing the first
	guest instruction.

Which implicitly means that. But it could be documented more explicitly,
thats right :)

	Joerg

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: SVM emulation: EVENTINJ marked valid when a pagefault happens while issuing a software interrupt

[Jamie Lokier]

Roedel, Joerg wrote:
> On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 02:10:59AM -0400, Jan Kiszka wrote:
> > Erik van der Kouwe wrote:
> 
> > > In my experience, if I provide the -enable-kvm switch then the guest VMM
> > > never detects the presence of virtualization support. Does this only
> > > work on AMD hardware? Or do I need to supply some additional parameter
> > > to make it work?
> > 
> > Yes, forgot to mention: -enable-nesting, and you need qemu-kvm. This
> > feature hasn't been merged upstream yet.
> 
> And the svm-emulation is only available on AMD hardware.

I assume you mean nested SVM emulation in a KVM guest is only
available on real AMD hardware?

Is this due to something inherent, or just a limitation of the KVM
code not handling all the necessary traps in kvm-intel?

Thanks,
-- Jamie

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: SVM emulation: EVENTINJ marked valid when a pagefault happens while issuing a software interrupt

[Erik van der Kouwe]

Hi,

>> And the svm-emulation is only available on AMD hardware.
> 
> I assume you mean nested SVM emulation in a KVM guest is only
> available on real AMD hardware?
> 
> Is this due to something inherent, or just a limitation of the KVM
> code not handling all the necessary traps in kvm-intel?

I don't think you could hardware-emulate a CPU from a different brand. 
AMD instructions would probably trap on Intel, but might also just do 
something completely different without a #VMEXIT. Same problem would 
exist vice versa.

Would be nice to have nested VMX support though, given that Intel CPUs 
are so much more common than AMDs. I've been searching on the Dell 
website (in the Netherlands) for a laptop recently and I couldn't find a 
single AMD model.

With kind regards,
Erik

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: SVM emulation: EVENTINJ marked valid when a pagefault happens while issuing a software interrupt

[Roedel, Joerg]

On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 09:20:31AM -0400, Jamie Lokier wrote:
> Roedel, Joerg wrote:
> > On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 02:10:59AM -0400, Jan Kiszka wrote:
> > > Erik van der Kouwe wrote:
> > 
> > > > In my experience, if I provide the -enable-kvm switch then the guest VMM
> > > > never detects the presence of virtualization support. Does this only
> > > > work on AMD hardware? Or do I need to supply some additional parameter
> > > > to make it work?
> > > 
> > > Yes, forgot to mention: -enable-nesting, and you need qemu-kvm. This
> > > feature hasn't been merged upstream yet.
> > 
> > And the svm-emulation is only available on AMD hardware.
> 
> I assume you mean nested SVM emulation in a KVM guest is only
> available on real AMD hardware?

Right.

> Is this due to something inherent, or just a limitation of the KVM
> code not handling all the necessary traps in kvm-intel?

The SVM and VMX extensions are architecturally very different in many
details. This makes it very hard to emulate VMX on SVM or vice verca. I
am not even sure if it is possible at all to emulate one extension in an
architectural complete way using the other extension.

	Joerg

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: SVM emulation: EVENTINJ marked valid when a pagefault happens while issuing a software interrupt

[Roedel, Joerg]

On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 09:30:19AM -0400, Erik van der Kouwe wrote:
> Would be nice to have nested VMX support though, given that Intel CPUs 
> are so much more common than AMDs. I've been searching on the Dell 
> website (in the Netherlands) for a laptop recently and I couldn't find a 
> single AMD model.

That doesn't mean they are uncommon ;-) There are many vendors that
offer notebooks with AMD processors.

	Joerg

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: SVM emulation: EVENTINJ marked valid when a pagefault happens while issuing a software interrupt

[Erik van der Kouwe]

Hi,

>> Would be nice to have nested VMX support though, given that Intel CPUs 
>> are so much more common than AMDs. I've been searching on the Dell 
>> website (in the Netherlands) for a laptop recently and I couldn't find a 
>> single AMD model.
> 
> That doesn't mean they are uncommon ;-) There are many vendors that
> offer notebooks with AMD processors.

In theory that is true but in practice it means that my next laptop 
probably won't have an AMD chip in it (which is pity because I really 
like my current AMD Dell except that it doesn't have SVM). It surprised 
me though because I thought Dell was also involved in the anti-trust 
suits against Intel.

With kind regards,
Erik