Xen Device Emulation Backend (xenpvh) — QEMU documentation

# Xen Device Emulation Backend (`xenpvh`)

This machine is a little unusual compared to others as QEMU just acts as an IOREQ server to register/connect with Xen Hypervisor. Control of the VMs themselves is left to the Xen tooling.

When TPM is enabled, this machine also creates a tpm-tis-device at a user input tpm base address, adds a TPM emulator and connects to a swtpm application running on host machine via chardev socket. This enables xenpvh to support TPM functionalities for a guest domain.

More information about TPM use and installing swtpm linux application can be found in the QEMU TPM Device section.

Example for starting swtpm on host machine:

    mkdir /tmp/vtpm2
    swtpm socket --tpmstate dir=/tmp/vtpm2 \
      --ctrl type=unixio,path=/tmp/vtpm2/swtpm-sock &

Sample QEMU xenpvh commands for running and connecting with Xen:

    qemu-system-aarch64 -xen-domid 1 \
      -chardev socket,id=libxl-cmd,path=qmp-libxl-1,server=on,wait=off \
      -mon chardev=libxl-cmd,mode=control \
      -chardev socket,id=libxenstat-cmd,path=qmp-libxenstat-1,server=on,wait=off \
      -mon chardev=libxenstat-cmd,mode=control \
      -xen-attach -name guest0 -vnc none -display none -nographic \
      -machine xenpvh -m 1301 \
      -chardev socket,id=chrtpm,path=tmp/vtpm2/swtpm-sock \
      -tpmdev emulator,id=tpm0,chardev=chrtpm -machine tpm-base-addr=0x0C000000

In above QEMU command, last two lines are for connecting xenpvh QEMU to swtpm via chardev socket.