This document covers the command line options which the Xen Hypervisor.
Most parameters take the form option=value
. Different options on
the command line should be space delimited. All options are case
sensitive, as are all values unless explicitly noted.
<boolean>
)All boolean option may be explicitly enabled using a value
of
yes
,on
,true
,enable
or1
They may be explicitly disabled using a value
of
no
,off
,false
,disable
or0
In addition, a boolean option may be enabled by simply stating its
name, and may be disabled by prefixing its name with no-
.
Enable noreboot mode
noreboot=true
Disable x2apic support (if present)
x2apic=off
Enable synchronous console mode
sync_console
Explicitly specifying any value other than those listed above is
undefined, as is stacking a no-
prefix with an explicit value.
<integer>
)An integer parameter will default to decimal and may be prefixed with
a -
for negative numbers. Alternatively, a hexadecimal number may be
used by prefixing the number with 0x
, or an octal number may be used
if a leading 0
is present.
Providing a string which does not validly convert to an integer is undefined.
<size>
)A size parameter may be any integer, with a single size suffix
T
or t
: TiB (2^40)G
or g
: GiB (2^30)M
or m
: MiB (2^20)K
or k
: KiB (2^10)B
or b
: BytesWithout a size suffix, the default will be kilo. Providing a suffix other than those listed above is undefined.
Many parameters are more complicated and require more intricate configuration. The detailed description of each individual parameter specify which values are valid.
Some options take a comma separated list of values.
Some parameters act as combinations of the above, most commonly a mix of Boolean and String. These are noted in the relevant sections.
= force | ht | noirq | <boolean>
String, or Boolean to disable.
The acpi option is used to control a set of four related boolean
flags; acpi_force
, acpi_ht
, acpi_noirq
and acpi_disabled
.
By default, Xen will scan the DMI data and blacklist certain systems
which are known to have broken ACPI setups. Providing acpi=force
will cause Xen to ignore the blacklist and attempt to use all ACPI
features.
Using acpi=ht
causes Xen to parse the ACPI tables enough to
enumerate all CPUs, but will not use other ACPI features. This is not
common, and only has an effect if your system is blacklisted.
The acpi=noirq
option causes Xen to not parse the ACPI MADT table
looking for IO-APIC entries. This is also not common, and any system
which requires this option to function should be blacklisted.
Additionally, this will not prevent Xen from finding IO-APIC entries
from the MP tables.
Finally, any of the boolean false options can be used to disable ACPI usage entirely.
Because responsibility for ACPI processing is shared between Xen and the domain 0 kernel this option is automatically propagated to the domain 0 command line
= <integer>
Specify which ACPI MADT table to parse for APIC information, if more than one is present.
= <boolean>
Default:
false
Enforce checking that P-state transitions by the ACPI cpufreq driver actually result in the nominated frequency to be established. A warning message will be logged if that isn't the case.
= <boolean>
Instruct Xen to ignore timer-interrupt override.
= s3_bios | s3_mode
s3_bios
instructs Xen to invoke video BIOS initialization during S3
resume.
s3_mode
instructs Xen to set up the boot time (option vga=
) video
mode during S3 resume.
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Permit Xen to use superpages when performing memory management.
= <boolean>
Default:
false
Permit multiple copies of host p2m.
= bigsmp | default
Override Xen's logic for choosing the APIC driver. By default, if
there are more than 8 CPUs, Xen will switch to bigsmp
over
default
.
= <boolean>
Default:
false
Force boot on potentially unsafe systems. By default Xen will refuse to boot on systems with the following errata:
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Permit Xen to use APIC Virtualisation Extensions. This is an optimisation available as part of VT-x, and allows hardware to take care of the guests APIC handling, rather than requiring emulation in Xen.
= verbose | debug
Increase the verbosity of the APIC code from the default value.
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Permit Xen to use "Always Running APIC Timer" support on compatible hardware in combination with cpuidle. This option is only expected to be useful for developers wishing Xen to fall back to older timing methods on newer hardware.
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Permit Xen to use Address Space Identifiers. This is an optimisation which tags the TLB entries with an ID per vcpu. This allows for guest TLB flushes to be performed without the overhead of a complete TLB flush.
= <boolean>
Default:
false
Permits Xen to set up and use PCI Address Translation Services. This is a performance optimisation for PCI Passthrough.
WARNING: Xen cannot currently safely use ATS because of its synchronous wait loops for Queued Invalidation completions.
= <size>
Default:
0
(no limit)
Specify a maximum amount of available memory, to which Xen will clamp the e820 table.
= List of [ <integer> | <integer>-<integer> ]
Specify that certain pages, or certain ranges of pages contain bad
bytes and should not be used. For example, if your memory tester says
that byte 0x12345678
is bad, you would place badpage=0x12345
on
Xen's command line.
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Scrub free RAM during boot. This is a safety feature to prevent accidentally leaking sensitive VM data into other VMs if Xen crashes and reboots.
= <size>
Default:
128M
Maximum RAM block size chunks to be scrubbed whilst holding the page heap lock and not running softirqs. Reduce this if softirqs are not being run frequently enough. Setting this to a high value may cause boot failure, particularly if the NMI watchdog is also enabled.
= List of [ thunk=retpoline|lfence|jmp, ibrs=<bool>, ibpb=<bool>, rsb_{vmexit,native}=<bool> ]
WARNING: This command line option is deprecated, and superseded by spec-ctrl= - using both options in combination is undefined.
Branch Target Injection controls. By default, Xen will pick the most appropriate BTI mitigations based on compiled in support, loaded microcode, and hardware details.
WARNING: Any use of this option may interfere with heuristics. Use with extreme care.
If Xen was compiled with INDIRECT_THUNK support, thunk=
can be used to
select which of the thunks gets patched into the __x86_indirect_thunk_%reg
locations. The default thunk is retpoline
(generally preferred for Intel
hardware), with the alternatives being jmp
(a jmp *%reg
gadget, minimal
overhead), and lfence
(an lfence; jmp *%reg
gadget, preferred for AMD).
On hardware supporting IBRS, the ibrs=
option can be used to force or
prevent Xen using the feature itself. If Xen is not using IBRS itself,
functionality is still set up so IBRS can be virtualised for guests.
On hardware supporting IBPB, the ibpb=
option can be used to prevent Xen
from issuing Branch Prediction Barriers on vcpu context switches.
The rsb_vmexit=
and rsb_native=
options can be used to fine tune when the
RSB gets overwritten. There are individual controls for an entry from HVM
context, and an entry from a native (PV or Xen) context.
= <size>
Default:
0
(1/32 of RAM)
Amount of RAM to set aside for the Xenheap. Must be an integer multiple of 32.
By default will use 1/32 of the RAM up to a maximum of 1GB and with a minimum of 32M, subject to a suitably aligned and sized contiguous region of memory being available.
= pit | hpet | acpi
If set, override Xen's default choice for the platform timer.
= <integer>
Default:
2
Specify the event count threshold for raising Corrected Machine Check Interrupts. Specifying zero disables CMCI handling.
= <boolean>
Default:
false
Flag to indicate whether to probe for a CMOS Real Time Clock irrespective of ACPI indicating none to be there.
= <baud>[/<base-baud>][,[DPS][,[<io-base>|pci|amt][,[<irq>][,[<port-bdf>][,[<bridge-bdf>]]]]]]
Both option com1
and com2
follow the same format.
<baud>
may be either an integer baud rate, or the string auto
if
the bootloader or other earlier firmware has already set it up.DPS
represents the number of data bits, the parity, and the number
of stop bits.
D
is an integer between 5 and 8 for the number of data bits.P
is a single character representing the type of parity:
n
Noo
Odde
Evenm
Marks
SpaceS
is an integer 1 or 2 for the number of stop bits.<io-base>
is an integer which specifies the IO base port for UART
registers.<irq>
is the IRQ number to use, or 0
to use the UART in poll
mode only.<port-bdf>
is the PCI location of the UART, in
<bus>:<device>.<function>
notation.<bridge-bdf>
is the PCI bridge behind which is the UART, in
<bus>:<device>.<function>
notation.pci
indicates that Xen should scan the PCI bus for the UART,
avoiding Intel AMT devices.amt
indicated that Xen should scan the PCI bus for the UART,
including Intel AMT devices if present.A typical setup for most situations might be com1=115200,8n1
= <size>
Default:
conring_size=16k
Specify the size of the console ring buffer.
= List of [ vga | com1[H,L] | com2[H,L] | dbgp | none ]
Default:
console=com1,vga
Specify which console(s) Xen should use.
vga
indicates that Xen should try and use the vga graphics adapter.
com1
and com2
indicates that Xen should use serial ports 1 and 2
respectively. Optionally, these arguments may be followed by an H
or
L
. H
indicates that transmitted characters will have their MSB
set, while received characters must have their MSB set. L
indicates
the converse; transmitted and received characters will have their MSB
cleared. This allows a single port to be shared by two subsystems
(e.g. console and debugger).
dbgp
indicates that Xen should use a USB debug port.
none
indicates that Xen should not use a console. This option only
makes sense on its own.
= none | date | datems | boot
Default:
none
Specify which timestamp format Xen should use for each console line.
none
: No timestampsdate
: Date and time information
[YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS]
datems
: Date and time, with milliseconds
[YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.mmm]
boot
: Seconds and microseconds since boot
[SSSSSS.uuuuuu]
For compatibility with the older boolean parameter, specifying
console_timestamps
alone will enable the date
option.
= <boolean>
Default:
false
Flag to indicate whether all guest console output should be copied into the console ring buffer.
= <switch char>[x]
Default:
conswitch=a
Specify which character should be used to switch serial input between Xen and dom0. The required sequence is CTRL-<switch char> three times.
The optional trailing x
indicates that Xen should not automatically
switch the console input to dom0 during boot. Any other value,
including omission, causes Xen to automatically switch to the dom0
console during dom0 boot. Use conswitch=ax
to keep the default switch
character, but for xen to keep the console.
= power | performance
Default:
power
= arch_perfmon
If set, force use of the performance counters for oprofile, rather than detecting available support.
= none | {{ <boolean> | xen } [:[powersave|performance|ondemand|userspace][,<maxfreq>][,[<minfreq>][,[verbose]]]]} | dom0-kernel
Default:
xen
Indicate where the responsibility for driving power states lies. Note that the
choice of dom0-kernel
is deprecated and not supported by all Dom0 kernels.
<maxfreq>
and <minfreq>
are integers which represent max and min processor frequencies
respectively.verbose
option can be included as a string or also as verbose=<integer>
= List of comma separated booleans
This option allows for fine tuning of the facilities Xen will use, after accounting for hardware capabilities as enumerated via CPUID.
Currently accepted:
The Speculation Control hardware features md-clear
, ibrsb
, stibp
, ibpb
,
l1d-flush
and ssbd
are used by default if available and applicable. They can
be ignored, e.g. no-ibrsb
, at which point Xen won't use them itself, and
won't offer them to guests.
= fam_0f_rev_c | fam_0f_rev_d | fam_0f_rev_e | fam_0f_rev_f | fam_0f_rev_g | fam_10_rev_b | fam_10_rev_c | fam_11_rev_b
If the other cpuid_mask_{,ext_,thermal_,l7s0_}e{a,b,c,d}x options are fully set (unspecified on the command line), specify a pre-canned cpuid mask to mask the current processor down to appear as the specified processor. It is important to ensure that all hosts in a pool appear the same to guests to allow successful live migration.
= <integer>
Default:
~0
(all bits set)
These four command line parameters are used to specify cpuid masks to help with cpuid levelling across a pool of hosts. Setting a bit in the mask indicates that the feature should be enabled, while clearing a bit in the mask indicates that the feature should be disabled. It is important to ensure that all hosts in a pool appear the same to guests to allow successful live migration.
= <integer>
Default:
~0
(all bits set)
This command line parameter is also used to specify a cpuid mask to help with cpuid levelling across a pool of hosts. See the description of the other respective options above.
= <integer>
Default:
~0
(all bits set)
These three command line parameters are also used to specify cpuid masks to help with cpuid levelling across a pool of hosts. See the description of the other respective options above.
= <boolean>
= <boolean>
= <size>
Default:
4G
Specify the maximum address to allocate certain structures, if used in
combination with the low_crashinfo
command line option.
= <ramsize-range>:<size>[,...][@<offset>]
= <integer>
= <integer>
= <integer>
= core | socket | node | all
Default:
core
Specify how host CPUs are arranged in runqueues. Runqueues are kept
balanced with respect to the load generated by the vCPUs running on
them. Smaller runqueues (as in with core
) means more accurate load
balancing (for instance, it will deal better with hyperthreading),
but also more overhead.
Available alternatives, with their meaning, are:
* core
: one runqueue per each physical core of the host;
* socket
: one runqueue per each physical socket (which often,
but not always, matches a NUMA node) of the host;
* node
: one runqueue per each NUMA node of the host;
* all
: just one runqueue shared by all the logical pCPUs of
the host
= ehci[ <integer> | @pci<bus>:<slot>.<func> ]
Specify the USB controller to use, either by instance number (when going over the PCI busses sequentially) or by PCI device (must be on segment 0).
= <integer>
Default:
20
Limits the number lines printed in Xen stack traces.
= <integer>
Default:
128
Specify the size of the console debug trace buffer in KiB. The debug trace feature is only enabled in debugging builds of Xen.
= <integer>
Specify the bit width of the DMA heap.
= List of <hex>-<hex>
Specify a list of IO ports to be excluded from dom0 access.
Either:
= <integer>
.
The number of VCPUs to give to dom0. This number of VCPUs can be more than the number of PCPUs on the host. The default is the number of PCPUs.
Or:
= <min>-<max>
where<min>
and<max>
are integers.
Gives dom0 a number of VCPUs equal to the number of PCPUs, but always
at least <min>
and no more than <max>
. Using <min>
may give
more VCPUs than PCPUs. <min>
or <max>
may be omitted and the
defaults of 1 and unlimited respectively are used instead.
For example, with dom0_max_vcpus=4-8
:
Number of PCPUs | Dom0 VCPUs 2 | 4 4 | 4 6 | 6 8 | 8 10 | 8
= List of ( min:<size> | max:<size> | <size> )
Set the amount of memory for the initial domain (dom0). If a size is positive, it represents an absolute value. If a size is negative, it is subtracted from the total available memory.
<size>
specifies the exact amount of memory.min:<size>
specifies the minimum amount of memory.max:<size>
specifies the maximum amount of memory.If <size>
is not specified, the default is all the available memory
minus some reserve. The reserve is 1/16 of the available memory or
128 MB (whichever is smaller).
The amount of memory will be at least the minimum but never more than
the maximum (i.e., max
overrides the min
option). If there isn't
enough memory then as much as possible is allocated.
max:<size>
also sets the maximum reservation (the maximum amount of
memory dom0 can balloon up to). If this is omitted then the maximum
reservation is unlimited.
For example, to set dom0's initial memory allocation to 512MB but
allow it to balloon up as far as 1GB use dom0_mem=512M,max:1G
If you use this option then it is highly recommended that you disable any dom0 autoballooning feature present in your toolstack. See the xl.conf(5) man page or Xen Best Practices.
= List of [ <integer> | relaxed | strict ]
Default:
strict
Specify the NUMA nodes to place Dom0 on. Defaults for vCPU-s created
and memory assigned to Dom0 will be adjusted to match the node
restrictions set up here. Note that the values to be specified here are
ACPI PXM ones, not Xen internal node numbers. relaxed
sets up vCPU
affinities to prefer but be not limited to the specified node(s).
= <boolean>
= <boolean>
Default:
false
Pin dom0 vcpus to their respective pcpus
= <boolean>
Default:
false
Flag that makes a 64bit dom0 boot in PVH mode. No 32bit support at present.
= path [:options]
Default:
""
Specify the full path in the device tree for the UART. If the path doesn't
start with /
, it is assumed to be an alias. The options are device specific.
= <boolean>
Flag that specifies if RAM should be clipped to the highest cacheable MTRR.
Default:
true
on Intel CPUs, otherwisefalse
= <boolean>
Default:
false
Flag that enables verbose output when processing e820 information and applying clipping.
= off | on | skipmbr
Control retrieval of Extended Disc Data (EDD) from the BIOS during boot.
= no | force
Either force retrieval of monitor EDID information via VESA DDC, or disable it (edid=no). This option should not normally be required except for debugging purposes.
= List of [ rs | attr ]
All options are of boolean kind and can be prefixed with no-
to
effect the inverse meaning.
rs
Default:
true
Force or disable use of EFI runtime services.
attr=uc
Default:
off
Allows mapping of RuntimeServices which have no cachability attribute set as UC.
= [<domU number>][,<dom0 number>]
Default:
32,<variable>
Change the number of PIRQs available for guests. The optional first number is
common for all domUs, while the optional second number (preceded by a comma)
is for dom0. Changing the setting for domU has no impact on dom0 and vice
versa. For example to change dom0 without changing domU, use
extra_guest_irqs=,512
. The default value for Dom0 and an eventual separate
hardware domain is architecture dependent.
Note that specifying zero as domU value means zero, while for dom0 it means
to use the default.
= permissive | enforcing | late | disabled
Default:
enforcing
Specify how the FLASK security server should be configured. This option is only available if the hypervisor was compiled with FLASK support. This can be enabled by running either: - make -C xen config and enabling XSM and FLASK. - make -C xen menuconfig and enabling 'FLux Advanced Security Kernel support' and 'Xen Security Modules support'
permissive
: This is intended for development and is not suitable for use
with untrusted guests. If a policy is provided by the bootloader, it will be
loaded; errors will be reported to the ring buffer but will not prevent
booting. The policy can be changed to enforcing mode using "xl setenforce".enforcing
: This requires a security policy to be provided by the bootloader
and will enter enforcing mode prior to the creation of domain 0. If a valid
policy is not provided, the hypervisor will not continue booting.late
: This disables loading of the security policy from the bootloader.
FLASK will be enabled but will not enforce access controls until a policy is
loaded by a domain using "xl loadpolicy". Once a policy is loaded, FLASK will
run in enforcing mode unless "xl setenforce" has changed that setting.disabled
: This causes the XSM framework to revert to the dummy module. The
dummy module provides the same security policy as is used when compiling the
hypervisor without support for XSM. The xsm_op hypercall can also be used to
switch to this mode after boot, but there is no way to re-enable FLASK once
the dummy module is loaded.
= <height>
where height is8x8 | 8x14 | 8x16
Specify the font size when using the VESA console driver.
= <boolean>
Default:
false
Allow EPT to be enabled when VMX feature VM_ENTRY_LOAD_GUEST_PAT is not present.
Warning: Due to CVE-2013-2212, VMX feature VM_ENTRY_LOAD_GUEST_PAT is by default required as a prerequisite for using EPT. If you are not using PCI Passthrough, or trust the guest administrator who would be using passthrough, then the requirement can be relaxed. This option is particularly useful for nested virtualization, to allow the L1 hypervisor to use EPT even if the L0 hypervisor does not provide VM_ENTRY_LOAD_GUEST_PAT.
= List of ( {no-}pml | {no-}ad )
Controls EPT related features.
Sub-options:
pml
Default:
true
PML is a new hardware feature in Intel's Broadwell Server and further platforms which reduces hypervisor overhead of log-dirty mechanism by automatically recording GPAs (guest physical addresses) when guest memory gets dirty, and therefore significantly reducing number of EPT violation caused by write protection of guest memory, which is a necessity to implement log-dirty mechanism before PML.
ad
Default: Hardware dependent
Have hardware keep accessed/dirty (A/D) bits updated.
= com1[H,L] | com2[H,L] | dbgp
Default: ``
Specify which console gdbstub should use. See console.
= List of [ max-ver:<integer>, transitive=<bool> ]
Default:
gnttab=max-ver:2,transitive
Control various aspects of the grant table behaviour available to guests.
max-ver
Select the maximum grant table version to offer to guests. Valid
version are 1 and 2.transitive
Permit or disallow the use of transitive grants. Note that the
use of grant table v2 without transitive grants is an ABI breakage from the
guests point of view.The usage of gnttab v2 is not security supported on ARM platforms.
= <integer>
Default:
32
Specify the maximum number of frames which any domain may use as part of its grant table.
= <integer>
Default:
8 * gnttab_max_frames
Specify the maximum number of frames to use as part of a domains maptrack array.
= <integer>
Deprecated Use gnttab_max_frames and gnttab_max_maptrack_frames instead.
Specify the maximum number of frames per grant table operation and the maximum number of maptrack frames domain.
= <level>[/<rate-limited level>]
where level isnone | error | warning | info | debug | all
Default:
guest_loglvl=none/warning
Set the logging level for Xen guests. Any log message with equal more more importance will be printed.
The optional <rate-limited level>
option instructs which severities
should be rate limited.
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Flag to globally enable or disable support for Hardware Assisted Paging (HAP)
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Flag to enable 1 GB host page table support for Hardware Assisted Paging (HAP).
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Flag to enable 2 MB host page table support for Hardware Assisted Paging (HAP).
= <domid>
Default:
0
Enable late hardware domain creation using the specified domain ID. This is intended to be used when domain 0 is a stub domain which builds a disaggregated system including a hardware domain with the specified domain ID. This option is supported only when compiled with XSM on x86.
= <boolean>
Default:
false
Control Xens use of the APEI Hardware Error Source Table, should one be found.
= <boolean>
= <integer>
The specified value is a bit mask with the individual bits having the following meaning:
Bit 0 - debug level 0 (unused at present) Bit 1 - debug level 1 (Control Register logging) Bit 2 - debug level 2 (VMX logging of MSR restores when context switching) Bit 3 - debug level 3 (unused at present) Bit 4 - I/O operation logging Bit 5 - vMMU logging Bit 6 - vLAPIC general logging Bit 7 - vLAPIC timer logging Bit 8 - vLAPIC interrupt logging Bit 9 - vIOAPIC logging Bit 10 - hypercall logging Bit 11 - MSR operation logging
Recognized in debug builds of the hypervisor only.
= <boolean>
Default:
false
Allow use of the Forced Emulation Prefix in HVM guests, to allow emulation of arbitrary instructions.
This option is intended for development purposes, and is only available in debug builds of the hypervisor.
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Specify whether guests are to be given access to physical port 80 (often used for debugging purposes), to override the DMI based detection of systems known to misbehave upon accesses to that port.
= <size>
Specify the memory boundary past which memory will be treated as highmem (x86 debug hypervisor only).
= <integer>
= old | new
Default:
new
unless directed-EOI is supported
= List of [ <boolean> | force | required | intremap | intpost | qinval | snoop | sharept | dom0-passthrough | dom0-strict | amd-iommu-perdev-intremap | workaround_bios_bug | igfx | verbose | debug ]
Sub-options:
<boolean>
Default:
on
Control the use of IOMMU(s) in the system.
All other sub-options are of boolean kind and can be prefixed with
no-
to effect the inverse meaning.
force
orrequired
Default:
false
Don't continue booting unless IOMMU support is found and can be initialized successfully.
intremap
Default:
true
Control the use of interrupt remapping (DMA remapping will always be enabled if IOMMU functionality is enabled).
intpost
Default:
false
Control the use of interrupt posting, which depends on the availability of interrupt remapping.
qinval
(VT-d)Default:
true
Control the use of Queued Invalidation.
snoop
(Intel)Default:
true
Control the use of Snoop Control.
sharept
Default:
true
Control whether CPU and IOMMU page tables should be shared.
dom0-passthrough
Default:
false
Control whether to disable DMA remapping for Dom0.
dom0-strict
Default:
false
Control whether to set up DMA remapping only for the memory Dom0 actually got assigned. Implies
no-dom0-passthrough
.
amd-iommu-perdev-intremap
Default:
true
Control whether to set up interrupt remapping data structures per device rather that once for the entire system. Turning this off is making PCI device pass-through insecure and hence unsupported.
workaround_bios_bug
(VT-d)Default:
false
Causes DRHD entries without any PCI discoverable devices under them to be ignored (normally IOMMU setup fails if any of the devices listed by a DRHD entry aren't PCI discoverable).
igfx
(VT-d)Default:
true
Enable IOMMU for Intel graphics devices. The intended usage of this option is
no-igfx
, which is similar to Linuxintel_iommu=igfx_off
option used to workaround graphics issues. If addingno-igfx
fixes anything, you should file a bug reporting the problem.
verbose
Default:
false
Increase IOMMU code's verbosity.
debug
Default:
false
Enable IOMMU debugging code (implies
verbose
).
= <boolean>
Default:
false
Use this to work around firmware issues providing correct RMRR entries. Rather than only mapping RAM pages for IOMMU accesses for Dom0, with this option all pages not marked as unusable in the E820 table will get a mapping established.
= <integer>
<hpet>
]
=[<seg>:]<bus>:<device>.<func>
Force the use of [<seg>:]<bus>:<device>.<func>
as device ID of HPET
<hpet>
instead of the one specified by the IVHD sub-tables of the IVRS
ACPI table.
<ioapic>
]
=[<seg>:]<bus>:<device>.<func>
Force the use of [<seg>:]<bus>:<device>.<func>
as device ID of IO-APIC
<ioapic>
instead of the one specified by the IVHD sub-tables of the IVRS
ACPI table.
= <boolean>
Force the use of use of the local APIC on a uniprocessor system, even if left disabled by the BIOS.
= <boolean>
= <boolean>
= <level>[/<rate-limited level>]
where level isnone | error | warning | info | debug | all
Default:
loglvl=warning
Set the logging level for Xen. Any log message with equal more more importance will be printed.
The optional <rate-limited level>
option instructs which severities
should be rate limited.
= none | min | all
Default:
none
if not specified at all, or tomin
if low_crashinfo is present without qualification.
This option is only useful for hosts with a 32bit dom0 kernel, wishing to use kexec functionality in the case of a crash. It represents which data structures should be deliberately allocated in low memory, so the crash kernel may find find them. Should be used in combination with crashinfo_maxaddr.
= <size>
Default:
64M
Specify the threshold below which Xen will inform dom0 that the quantity of
free memory is getting low. Specifying 0
will disable this notification.
= [<domU>][,[<ctldom>][,[<hwdom>][,<ptdom>]]]
x86 default:
9,18,12,12
ARM default:9,18,10,10
Change the maximum order permitted for allocation (or allocation-like) requests issued by the various kinds of domains (in this order: ordinary DomU, control domain, hardware domain, and - when supported by the platform - DomU with pass-through device assigned).
= <integer>
= <integer>
Specifies the number of interrupts to be use for pin (IO-APIC or legacy PIC) based interrupts. Any higher IRQs will be available for use via PCI MSI.
= <integer>
= <integer>
= <integer>
= verbose
Specify verbose machine check output.
= <size>
Specify the maximum address of physical RAM. Any RAM beyond this limit is ignored by Xen.
= <boolean>[,amd-fam10]
Default:
1
Specify if the MMConfig space should be enabled.
= <boolean> | all
Default:
false
By default, domains may not create cached mappings to MMIO regions.
This option relaxes the check for Domain 0 (or when using all
, all PV
domains), to permit the use of cacheable MMIO mappings.
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Force Xen to (not) use PCI-MSI, even if ACPI FADT says otherwise.
= <boolean>
Default:
false
Print boot time MTRR state (x86 only).
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Use the MWAIT idle driver (with model specific C-state knowledge) instead of the ACPI based one.
= ignore | dom0 | fatal
Default:
fatal
for a debug build, ordom0
for a non-debug build
Specify what Xen should do in the event of an NMI parity or I/O error.
ignore
discards the error; dom0
causes Xen to report the error to
dom0, while 'fatal' causes Xen to print diagnostics and then hang.
Instruct Xen to ignore any IOAPICs that are present in the system, and instead continue to use the legacy PIC. This is not recommended with pvops type kernels.
Because responsibility for APIC setup is shared between Xen and the domain 0 kernel this option is automatically propagated to the domain 0 command line.
= <boolean>
Default:
true
By default, Xen will use the INVPCID instruction for TLB management if it is available. This option can be used to cause Xen to fall back to older mechanisms, which are generally slower.
= <boolean>
Disable software IRQ balancing and affinity. This can be used on systems such as Dell 1850/2850 that have workarounds in hardware for IRQ routing issues.
= <boolean>
Default:
false
Ignore the local APIC on a uniprocessor system, even if enabled by the BIOS.
= <boolean>
Do not execute real-mode bootstrap code when booting Xen. This option should not be used except for debugging. It will effectively disable the vga option, which relies on real mode to set the video mode.
= <boolean>
Do not automatically reboot after an error. This is useful for catching debug output. Defaults to automatically reboot after 5 seconds.
= <boolean>
Disable SMP support. No secondary processors will be booted. Defaults to booting secondary processors.
= <integer>
= on | off | fake=<integer> | noacpi
Default:
on
= {no-}serr | {no-}perr
Default: Signaling left as set by firmware.
Disable signaling of SERR (system errors) and/or PERR (parity errors) on all PCI devices.
=[<seg>:]<bus>:<device>,<stride>
Mark a group of PCI devices as using phantom functions without actually advertising so, so the IOMMU can create translation contexts for them.
All numbers specified must be hexadecimal ones.
This option can be specified more than once (up to 8 times at present).
= <integer>
= <integer>
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Flag to enable Memory Protection Keys.
The protection-key feature provides an additional mechanism by which IA-32e paging controls access to usermode addresses.
= <boolean> | xpti=<bool>
Default:
xpti
Can be modified at runtime (change takes effect only for domains created afterwards)
If available, control usage of the PCID feature of the processor for
64-bit pv-domains. PCID can be used either for no domain at all (false
),
for all of them (true
), only for those subject to XPTI (xpti
) or for
those not subject to XPTI (no-xpti
). The feature is used only in case
INVPCID is supported and not disabled via invpcid=false
.
= List of ( cmt:<boolean> | rmid_max:<integer> | cat:<boolean> | cos_max:<integer> | cdp:<boolean> )
Default:
psr=cmt:0,rmid_max:255,cat:0,cos_max:255,cdp:0
Platform Shared Resource(PSR) Services. Intel Haswell and later server platforms offer information about the sharing of resources.
To use the PSR monitoring service for a certain domain, a Resource Monitoring ID(RMID) is used to bind the domain to corresponding shared resource. RMID is a hardware-provided layer of abstraction between software and logical processors.
To use the PSR cache allocation service for a certain domain, a capacity bitmasks(CBM) is used to bind the domain to corresponding shared resource. CBM represents cache capacity and indicates the degree of overlap and isolation between domains. In hypervisor a Class of Service(COS) ID is allocated for each unique CBM.
The following resources are available:
cmt
instructs Xen to enable/disable Cache Monitoring Technology.rmid_max
indicates the max value for rmid.Memory Bandwidth Monitoring (Broadwell and later). Information regarding the total/local memory bandwidth. Follow the same options with Cache Monitoring Technology.
Cache Allocation Technology (Broadwell and later). Information regarding the cache allocation.
cat
instructs Xen to enable/disable Cache Allocation Technology.cos_max
indicates the max value for COS ID.cdp
instructs Xen to enable/disable Code and Data Prioritization. Note
that cos_max
of CDP is a little different from cos_max
of CAT. With
CDP, one COS will corespond two CBMs other than one with CAT, due to the
sum of CBMs is fixed, that means actual cos_max
in use will automatically
reduce to half when CDP is enabled.
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Only available if Xen is compiled with CONFIG_PV_LINEAR_PT support enabled.
Allow PV guests to have pagetable entries pointing to other pagetables of the same level (i.e., allowing L2 PTEs to point to other L2 pages). This technique is often called "linear pagetables", and is sometimes used to allow operating systems a simple way to consistently map the current process's pagetables into its own virtual address space.
Linux and MiniOS don't use this technique. NetBSD and Novell Netware do; there may be other custom operating systems which do. If you're certain you don't plan on having PV guests which use this feature, turning it off can reduce the attack surface.
= List of [ <bool>, dom0=<bool>, domu=<bool> ]
Default:
false
on believed-unaffected hardware.domu
on believed-affected hardware.
Mitigations for L1TF / XSA-273 / CVE-2018-3620 for PV guests.
For backwards compatibility, we may not alter an architecturally-legitimate pagetable entry a PV guest chooses to write. We can however force such a guest into shadow mode so that Xen controls the PTEs which are reachable by the CPU pagewalk.
Shadowing is performed at the point where a PV guest first tries to write an L1TF-vulnerable PTE. Therefore, a PV guest kernel which has been updated with its own L1TF mitigations will not trigger shadow mode if it is well behaved.
If CONFIG_SHADOW_PAGING is not compiled in, this mitigation instead crashes the guest when an L1TF-vulnerable PTE is written, which still allows updated, well-behaved PV guests to run, despite Shadow being compiled out.
= t[riple] | k[bd] | a[cpi] | p[ci] | P[ower] | e[fi] | n[o] [, [w]arm | [c]old]
Default:
0
Specify the host reboot method.
warm
instructs Xen to not set the cold reboot flag.
cold
instructs Xen to set the cold reboot flag.
no
instructs Xen to not automatically reboot after panics or crashes.
triple
instructs Xen to reboot the host by causing a triple fault.
kbd
instructs Xen to reboot the host via the keyboard controller.
acpi
instructs Xen to reboot the host using RESET_REG in the ACPI FADT.
pci
instructs Xen to reboot the host using PCI reset register (port CF9).
Power
instructs Xen to power-cycle the host using PCI reset register (port CF9).
'efi' instructs Xen to reboot using the EFI reboot call (in EFI mode by default it will use that method first).
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Map the HPET page as read only in Dom0. If disabled the page will be mapped with read and write permissions.
= credit | credit2 | arinc653
Default:
sched=credit
Choose the default scheduler.
= <integer>
= <integer>
Set the timeslice of the credit1 scheduler, in milliseconds. The default is 30ms. Reasonable values may include 10, 5, or even 1 for very latency-sensitive workloads.
= <integer>
In order to limit the rate of context switching, set the minimum amount of time that a vcpu can be scheduled for before preempting it, in microseconds. The default is 1000us (1ms). Setting this to 0 disables it altogether.
= <boolean>
Normally Xen will try to maximize performance and cache utilization by spreading out vcpus across as many different divisions as possible (i.e, numa nodes, sockets, cores threads, &c). This often maximizes throughput, but also maximizes energy usage, since it reduces the depth to which a processor can sleep.
This option inverts the logic, so that the scheduler in effect tries to keep the vcpus on the smallest amount of silicon possible; i.e., first fill up sibling threads, then sibling cores, then sibling sockets, &c. This will reduce performance somewhat, particularly on systems with hyperthreading enabled, but should reduce power by enabling more sockets and cores to go into deeper sleep states.
= <size>
Default:
16kB
Set the serial transmit buffer size.
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Flag to enable Supervisor Mode Execution Protection
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Flag to enable Supervisor Mode Access Prevention
= <boolean>
Default: true
Control bring up of multiple hyper-threads per CPU core.
= <boolean> | cap | <integer>
A true boolean value enables legacy behavior (1s timeout), while cap
enforces the maximum theoretically necessary timeout of 670ms. Any number
is being interpreted as a custom timeout in milliseconds. Zero or boolean
false disable the quirk workaround, which is also the default.
= List of [ <bool>, xen=<bool>, {pv,hvm,msr-sc,rsb,md-clear}=<bool>, bti-thunk=retpoline|lfence|jmp, {ibrs,ibpb,ssbd,eager-fpu, l1d-flush}=<bool> ]
Controls for speculative execution sidechannel mitigations. By default, Xen will pick the most appropriate mitigations based on compiled in support, loaded microcode, and hardware details, and will virtualise appropriate mitigations for guests to use.
WARNING: Any use of this option may interfere with heuristics. Use with extreme care.
An overall boolean value, spec-ctrl=no
, can be specified to turn off all
mitigations, including pieces of infrastructure used to virtualise certain
mitigation features for guests. This also includes settings which xpti
,
smt
, pv-l1tf
control, unless the respective option(s) have been
specified earlier on the command line.
Alternatively, a slightly more restricted spec-ctrl=no-xen
can be used to
turn off all of Xen's mitigations, while leaving the virtualisation support
in place for guests to use.
Use of a positive boolean value for either of these options is invalid.
The booleans pv=
, hvm=
, msr-sc=
, rsb=
and md-clear=
offer fine
grained control over the alternative blocks used by Xen. These impact Xen's
ability to protect itself, and Xen's ability to virtualise support for guests
to use.
pv=
and hvm=
offer control over all suboptions for PV and HVM guests
respectively.msr-sc=
offers control over Xen's support for manipulating MSR_SPEC_CTRL
on entry and exit. These blocks are necessary to virtualise support for
guests and if disabled, guests will be unable to use IBRS/STIBP/SSBD/etc.rsb=
offers control over whether to overwrite the Return Stack Buffer /
Return Address Stack on entry to Xen.md-clear=
offers control over whether to use VERW to flush
microarchitectural buffers on idle and exit from Xen. Note: For
compatibility with development versions of this fix, mds=
is also accepted
on Xen 4.12 and earlier as an alias. Consult vendor documentation in
preference to here.If Xen was compiled with INDIRECT_THUNK support, bti-thunk=
can be used to
select which of the thunks gets patched into the __x86_indirect_thunk_%reg
locations. The default thunk is retpoline
(generally preferred for Intel
hardware), with the alternatives being jmp
(a jmp *%reg
gadget, minimal
overhead), and lfence
(an lfence; jmp *%reg
gadget, preferred for AMD).
On hardware supporting IBRS (Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation), the
ibrs=
option can be used to force or prevent Xen using the feature itself.
If Xen is not using IBRS itself, functionality is still set up so IBRS can be
virtualised for guests.
On hardware supporting IBPB (Indirect Branch Prediction Barrier), the ibpb=
option can be used to force (the default) or prevent Xen from issuing branch
prediction barriers on vcpu context switches.
On hardware supporting SSBD (Speculative Store Bypass Disable), the ssbd=
option can be used to force or prevent Xen using the feature itself. On AMD
hardware, this is a global option applied at boot, and not virtualised for
guest use. On Intel hardware, the feature is virtualised for guests,
independently of Xen's choice of setting.
On all hardware, the eager-fpu=
option can be used to force or prevent Xen
from using fully eager FPU context switches. This is currently implemented as
a global control. By default, Xen will choose to use fully eager context
switches on hardware believed to speculate past #NM exceptions.
On hardware supporting L1D_FLUSH, the l1d-flush=
option can be used to force
or prevent Xen from issuing an L1 data cache flush on each VMEntry.
Irrespective of Xen's setting, the feature is virtualised for HVM guests to
use. By default, Xen will enable this mitigation on hardware believed to be
vulnerable to L1TF.
= <boolean>
Default:
false
Flag to force synchronous console output. Useful for debugging, but not suitable for production environments due to incurred overhead.
= 0x<phys_addr>
Specify the physical address of the trusted boot shared page.
= <integer>
Specify the per-cpu trace buffer size in pages.
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Flag to enable TSC deadline as the APIC timer mode.
= <integer>
Specify a mask for Xen event tracing. This allows Xen tracing to be enabled at boot. Refer to the xentrace(8) documentation for a list of valid event mask values. In order to enable tracing, a buffer size (in pages) must also be specified via the tbuf_size parameter.
= <boolean>
= <integer>
= <boolean>
= <boolean>
= <boolean>
= <boolean>
= <integer>
= unstable | skewed
= [<integer> | scan]
Specify how and where to find CPU microcode update blob.
'integer' specifies the CPU microcode update blob module index. When positive,
this specifies the n-th module (in the GrUB entry, zero based) to be used
for updating CPU micrcode. When negative, counting starts at the end of
the modules in the GrUB entry (so with the blob commonly being last,
one could specify ucode=-1
). Note that the value of zero is not valid
here (entry zero, i.e. the first module, is always the Dom0 kernel
image). Note further that use of this option has an unspecified effect
when used with xen.efi (there the concept of modules doesn't exist, and
the blob gets specified via the ucode=<filename>
config file/section
entry; see EFI configuration file description).
'scan' instructs the hypervisor to scan the multiboot images for an cpio image that contains microcode. Depending on the platform the blob with the microcode in the cpio name space must be: - on Intel: kernel/x86/microcode/GenuineIntel.bin - on AMD : kernel/x86/microcode/AuthenticAMD.bin
= <boolean>
= <integer>
Default:
0
Specify a delay, in microseconds, between migrations of a VCPU between PCPUs when using the credit1 scheduler. This prevents rapid fluttering of a VCPU between CPUs, and reduces the implicit overheads such as cache-warming. 1ms (1000) has been measured as a good value.
= <integer>
= <integer>
= <integer>
= ( ask | current | text-80x<rows> | gfx-<width>x<height>x<depth> | mode-<mode> )[,keep]
ask
causes Xen to display a menu of available modes and request the
user to choose one of them.
current
causes Xen to use the graphics adapter in its current state,
without further setup.
text-80x<rows>
instructs Xen to set up text mode. Valid values for
<rows>
are 25, 28, 30, 34, 43, 50, 80
gfx-<width>x<height>x<depth>
instructs Xen to set up graphics mode
with the specified width, height and depth.
mode-<mode>
instructs Xen to use a specific mode, as shown with the
ask
option. (N.B menu modes are displayed in hex, so <mode>
should be a hexadecimal number)
The optional keep
parameter causes Xen to continue using the vga
console even after dom0 has been started. The default behaviour is to
relinquish control to dom0.
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Use Virtual Processor ID support if available. This prevents the need for TLB flushes on VM entry and exit, increasing performance.
= ( <boolean> | { bts | ipc | arch | rtm-abort=<bool> [, ...] } )
Default:
off
Switch on the virtualized performance monitoring unit for HVM guests.
If the current cpu isn't supported a message like 'VPMU: Initialization failed. ...' is printed on the hypervisor serial log.
For some Intel Nehalem processors a quirk handling exist for an unknown wrong behaviour (see handle_pmc_quirk()).
If 'vpmu=bts' is specified the virtualisation of the Branch Trace Store (BTS) feature is switched on on Intel processors supporting this feature.
vpmu=ipc enables performance monitoring, but restricts the counters to the most minimum set possible: instructions, cycles, and reference cycles. These can be used to calculate instructions per cycle (IPC).
vpmu=arch enables performance monitoring, but restricts the counters to the pre-defined architectural events only. These are exposed by cpuid, and listed in the Pre-Defined Architectural Performance Events table from the Intel 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer's Manual, Volume 3B, System Programming Guide, Part 2.
vpmu=rtm-abort controls a trade-off between working Restricted Transactional Memory, and working performance counters.
All processors released to date (Q1 2019) supporting Transactional Memory Extensions suffer an erratum which has been addressed in microcode.
Processors based on the Skylake microarchitecture with up-to-date
microcode internally use performance counter 3 to work around the erratum.
A consequence is that the counter gets reprogrammed whenever an XBEGIN
instruction is executed.
An alternative mode exists where PCR3 behaves as before, at the cost of
XBEGIN
unconditionally aborting. Enabling rtm-abort
mode will
activate this alternative mode.
If a boolean is not used, combinations of flags are allowed, comma separated. For example, vpmu=arch,bts.
Note that if watchdog option is also specified vpmu will be turned off.
Warning: As the virtualisation is not 100% safe, don't use the vpmu flag on production systems (see http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-163.html)!
`= trap | native
Default:
trap
WFI is the ARM instruction to "wait for interrupt". WFE is similar and
means "wait for event". This option, which is ARM specific, changes the
way guest WFI and WFE are implemented in Xen. By default, Xen traps both
instructions. In the case of WFI, Xen blocks the guest vcpu; in the case
of WFE, Xen yield the guest vcpu. When setting vwfi to native
, Xen
doesn't trap either instruction, running them in guest context. Setting
vwfi to native
reduces irq latency significantly. It can also lead to
suboptimal scheduling decisions, but only when the system is
oversubscribed (i.e., in total there are more vCPUs than pCPUs).
= force | <boolean>
Default:
false
Run an NMI watchdog on each processor. If a processor is stuck for
longer than the watchdog_timeout, a panic occurs. When force
is
specified, in addition to running an NMI watchdog on each processor,
unknown NMIs will still be processed.
= <integer>
Default:
5
Set the NMI watchdog timeout in seconds. Specifying 0
will turn off
the watchdog.
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Permit use of x2apic setup for SMP environments.
= <boolean>
Default:
true
if FADT mandates physical mode,false
otherwise.
In the case that x2apic is in use, this option switches between physical and clustered mode. The default, given no hint from the FADT, is cluster mode.
= List of [ default | <boolean> | dom0=<bool> | domu=<bool> ]
Default:
false
on hardware not to be vulnerable to Meltdown (e.g. AMD) Default:true
everywhere else
Override default selection of whether to isolate 64-bit PV guest page tables.
true
activates page table isolation even on hardware not vulnerable by
Meltdown for all domains.
false
deactivates page table isolation on all systems for all domains.
default
sets the default behaviour.
With dom0
and domu
it is possible to control page table isolation
for dom0 or guest domains only.
= <boolean>
Default:
true
Permit use of the xsave/xrstor
instructions.