Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] hw/arm/virt: smbios: inform guest of kvm

[Andrew Jones]

On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 09:09:11AM -0700, Peter Maydell wrote:
> On 23 September 2015 at 08:43, Peter Maydell <address@hidden> wrote:
> > On 23 September 2015 at 07:18, Andrew Jones <address@hidden> wrote:
> >> ARM/AArch64 KVM guests don't have any way to identify
> >> themselves as KVM guests (x86 guests use a CPUID leaf). Now, we
> >> could discuss all sorts of reasons why guests shouldn't need to
> >> know that, but then there's always some case where it'd be
> >> nice... Anyway, now that we have SMBIOS tables in ARM guests,
> >> it's easy for the guest to know that it's a QEMU instance. This
> >> patch takes that one step further, also identifying KVM, when
> >> appropriate. Again, we could debate why generally nothing
> >> should care whether it's of type QEMU or QEMU/KVM, but again,
> >> sometimes it's nice to know...
> >
> > This doesn't seem great to me, because it's ACPI/SMBIOS
> > specific. A mechanism that worked whether the guest was
> > booted via APCI or DT would seem preferable to me...
> 
> ...and, on a more careful reread, I don't like the way the
> behaviour is changing for "this is KVM" rather than "and it's
> KVM" being an additional piece of information.

It is "and it's KVM". We leave the SMBIOS Manufacturer as "QEMU",
so QEMU is still there, and even in the "primary" field. We only
change the Product Name to be KVM only, although that could
certainly be "QEMU/KVM Virtual Machine", if preferred.

Thanks,
drew