Re: [PATCH] KVM: X86: Allow userspace to define the microcode version

From: Paolo Bonzini
Date: Mon Feb 26 2018 - 07:41:47 EST


On 26/02/2018 13:22, Borislav Petkov wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 01:18:07PM +0100, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
>>> In this context, "host-initiated" write means written by KVM userspace
>>> with ioctl(KVM_SET_MSR). It generally happens only on VM startup, reset
>>> or live migration.
>>
>> To be clear, the target of the write is still the vCPU's emulated MSR.
>
> So how am I to imagine this as a user:
>
> qemu-system-x86_64 --microcode-revision=0xdeadbeef...

More like "-cpu foo,ucode_rev=0xdeadbeef". But in practice what would
happen is one of the following:

1) "-cpu host" sets ucode_rev to the same value of the host, everyone
else leaves it to zero as is now.

2) Only Amazon uses this feature and we ignore it. :)

Paolo