NAME

vmm.ko — bhyve virtual machine monitor

SYNOPSIS

To load the driver as a module at boot, add this line to loader.conf(5):

vmm_load="YES"

The module can also be loaded manually with kldload(8):

kldload vmm

DESCRIPTION

vmm.ko provides the kernel portion of the bhyve(4) hypervisor.

An Intel CPU with VT-x/EPT or AMD CPU with SVM support is required.

PCI device passthrough to a virtual machine requires hardware with VT-d support.

PCI PASSTHROUGH

When the hardware supports VT-d, and vmm.ko has been loaded at boot time, PCI devices can be reserved for use by the hypervisor. Entries consisting of the PCI bus/slot/function are added to the pptdevs loader.conf(5) variable. Additional entries are separated by spaces. Host PCI devices that match an entry will be assigned to the hypervisor and will not be probed by FreeBSD device drivers. See the EXAMPLES section below for sample usage.

Note that vmm must be given first the right of refusal to all pci(4) devices it may need to claim. As a result, the vmm kernel module almost certainly needs to be loaded from loader.conf(5) rather than by adding it to kld_list in rc.conf(5).

A large number of PCI device entries may require a string longer than the 128-character limit of loader.conf(5) variables. The pptdevs2 and pptdevs3 variables can be used for additional entries.

LOADER TUNABLES

Tunables can be set at the loader(8) prompt before booting the kernel or stored in loader.conf(5).

hw.vmm.maxcpu

Maximum number of virtual CPUs. The default is the number of physical CPUs in the system.

EXAMPLES

Reserve three PCI devices for use by the hypervisor: bus 10 slot 0 function 0, bus 6 slot 5 function 0, and bus 6 slot 5 function 1.

pptdevs="10/0/0 6/5/0 6/5/1"

It is possible to detach ppt from a PCI device without rebooting the host machine and then attach a host driver, using the devctl(8) utility. Suppose ppt is currently attached to pci0:0:1:0 and we want the host's xhci(4) driver to be attached instead:

# devctl set driver -f pci0:0:1:0 xhci

The same can be applied to attach ppt back:

# devctl set driver -f pci0:0:1:0 ppt

SEE ALSO

bhyve(4), loader.conf(5), bhyve(8), bhyveload(8), devctl(8), kldload(8)

HISTORY

vmm.ko first appeared in FreeBSD 10.0.

AUTHORS

Neel Natu ⟨neel@freebsd.org⟩
Peter Grehan ⟨grehan@freebsd.org⟩