Since commits 668fffa3f8 ("kvm: better MWAIT emulation for guestsâ€)
and 4d5422cea3 ("KVM: X86: Provide a capability to disable MWAIT interceptsâ€),
KVM was modified to allow an admin to configure certain guests to execute
MONITOR/MWAIT inside guest without being intercepted by host.
This is useful in case admin wishes to allocate a dedicated logical
processor for each vCPU thread. Thus, making it safe for guest to
completely control the power-state of the logical processor.
The ability to use this new KVM capability was introduced to QEMU by
commits 6f131f13e68d ("kvm: support -overcommit cpu-pm=on|offâ€) and
2266d4431132 ("i386/cpu: make -cpu host support monitor/mwaitâ€).
However, exposing MONITOR/MWAIT to a Linux guest may cause it's intel_idle
kernel module to execute c1e_promotion_disable() which will attempt to
RDMSR/WRMSR from/to MSR_IA32_POWER_CTL to manipulate the "C1E Enable"
bit. This behaviour was introduced by commit
32e9518005 ("intel_idle: export both C1 and C1Eâ€).
Becuase KVM doesn't emulate this MSR, running KVM with ignore_msrs=0
will cause the above guest behaviour to raise a #GP which will cause
guest to kernel panic.
Therefore, add support for nop emulation of MSR_IA32_POWER_CTL to
avoid #GP in guest in this scenario.
Future commits can optimise emulation further by reflecting guest
MSR changes to host MSR to provide guest with the ability to
fine-tune the dedicated logical processor power-state.
Reviewed-by: Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovsky@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Liran Alon <liran.alon@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
6c6a2ab962