4 = Guest-side Hardware Interface =
6 The QEMU TPM emulation implements a TPM TIS hardware interface following the
7 Trusted Computing Group's specification "TCG PC Client Specific TPM Interface
8 Specification (TIS)", Specification Version 1.3, 21 March 2013. This
9 specification, or a later version of it, can be accessed from the following
12 https://trustedcomputinggroup.org/pc-client-work-group-pc-client-specific-tpm-interface-specification-tis/
14 The TIS interface makes a memory mapped IO region in the area 0xfed40000 -
15 0xfed44fff available to the guest operating system.
18 QEMU files related to TPM TIS interface:
23 QEMU also implements a TPM CRB interface following the Trusted Computing
24 Group's specification "TCG PC Client Platform TPM Profile (PTP)
25 Specification", Family "2.0", Level 00 Revision 01.03 v22, May 22, 2017.
26 This specification, or a later version of it, can be accessed from the
29 https://trustedcomputinggroup.org/resource/pc-client-platform-tpm-profile-ptp-specification/
31 The CRB interface makes a memory mapped IO region in the area 0xfed40000 -
32 0xfed40fff (1 locality) available to the guest operating system.
34 QEMU files related to TPM CRB interface:
39 The bios/firmware may read the "etc/tpm/config" fw_cfg entry for
40 configuring the guest appropriately.
42 The entry of 6 bytes has the following content, in little-endian:
44 #define TPM_VERSION_UNSPEC 0
45 #define TPM_VERSION_1_2 1
46 #define TPM_VERSION_2_0 2
48 #define TPM_PPI_VERSION_NONE 0
49 #define TPM_PPI_VERSION_1_30 1
51 struct FwCfgTPMConfig {
52 uint32_t tpmppi_address; /* PPI memory location */
53 uint8_t tpm_version; /* TPM version */
54 uint8_t tpmppi_version; /* PPI version */
59 The TPM device is defined with ACPI ID "PNP0C31". QEMU builds a SSDT and passes
60 it into the guest through the fw_cfg device. The device description contains
61 the base address of the TIS interface 0xfed40000 and the size of the MMIO area
62 (0x5000). In case a TPM2 is used by QEMU, a TPM2 ACPI table is also provided.
63 The device is described to be used in polling mode rather than interrupt mode
64 primarily because no unused IRQ could be found.
66 To support measurement logs to be written by the firmware, e.g. SeaBIOS, a TCPA
67 table is implemented. This table provides a 64kb buffer where the firmware can
68 write its log into. For TPM 2 only a more recent version of the TPM2 table
69 provides support for measurements logs and a TCPA table does not need to be
72 The TCPA and TPM2 ACPI tables follow the Trusted Computing Group specification
73 "TCG ACPI Specification" Family "1.2" and "2.0", Level 00 Revision 00.37. This
74 specification, or a later version of it, can be accessed from the following
77 https://trustedcomputinggroup.org/tcg-acpi-specification/
79 == ACPI PPI Interface ==
81 QEMU supports the Physical Presence Interface (PPI) for TPM 1.2 and TPM 2. This
82 interface requires ACPI and firmware support. The specification can be found at
85 https://trustedcomputinggroup.org/resource/tcg-physical-presence-interface-specification/
87 PPI enables a system administrator (root) to request a modification to the
88 TPM upon reboot. The PPI specification defines the operation requests and the
89 actions the firmware has to take. The system administrator passes the operation
90 request number to the firmware through an ACPI interface which writes this
91 number to a memory location that the firmware knows. Upon reboot, the firmware
92 finds the number and sends commands to the the TPM. The firmware writes the TPM
93 result code and the operation request number to a memory location that ACPI can
94 read from and pass the result on to the administrator.
96 The PPI specification defines a set of mandatory and optional operations for
97 the firmware to implement. The ACPI interface also allows an administrator to
98 list the supported operations. In QEMU the ACPI code is generated by QEMU, yet
99 the firmware needs to implement support on a per-operations basis, and
100 different firmwares may support a different subset. Therefore, QEMU introduces
101 the virtual memory device for PPI where the firmware can indicate which
102 operations it supports and ACPI can enable the ones that are supported and
103 disable all others. This interface lies in main memory and has the following
106 +----------+--------+--------+-------------------------------------------+
107 | Field | Length | Offset | Description |
108 +----------+--------+--------+-------------------------------------------+
109 | func | 0x100 | 0x000 | Firmware sets values for each supported |
110 | | | | operation. See defined values below. |
111 +----------+--------+--------+-------------------------------------------+
112 | ppin | 0x1 | 0x100 | SMI interrupt to use. Set by firmware. |
113 | | | | Not supported. |
114 +----------+--------+--------+-------------------------------------------+
115 | ppip | 0x4 | 0x101 | ACPI function index to pass to SMM code. |
116 | | | | Set by ACPI. Not supported. |
117 +----------+--------+--------+-------------------------------------------+
118 | pprp | 0x4 | 0x105 | Result of last executed operation. Set by |
119 | | | | firmware. See function index 5 for values.|
120 +----------+--------+--------+-------------------------------------------+
121 | pprq | 0x4 | 0x109 | Operation request number to execute. See |
122 | | | | 'Physical Presence Interface Operation |
123 | | | | Summary' tables in specs. Set by ACPI. |
124 +----------+--------+--------+-------------------------------------------+
125 | pprm | 0x4 | 0x10d | Operation request optional parameter. |
126 | | | | Values depend on operation. Set by ACPI. |
127 +----------+--------+--------+-------------------------------------------+
128 | lppr | 0x4 | 0x111 | Last executed operation request number. |
129 | | | | Copied from pprq field by firmware. |
130 +----------+--------+--------+-------------------------------------------+
131 | fret | 0x4 | 0x115 | Result code from SMM function. |
132 | | | | Not supported. |
133 +----------+--------+--------+-------------------------------------------+
134 | res1 | 0x40 | 0x119 | Reserved for future use |
135 +----------+--------+--------+-------------------------------------------+
136 | next_step| 0x1 | 0x159 | Operation to execute after reboot by |
137 | | | | firmware. Used by firmware. |
138 +----------+--------+--------+-------------------------------------------+
139 | movv | 0x1 | 0x15a | Memory overwrite variable |
140 +----------+--------+--------+-------------------------------------------+
142 The following values are supported for the 'func' field. They correspond
143 to the values used by ACPI function index 8.
145 +----------+-------------------------------------------------------------+
146 | value | Description |
147 +----------+-------------------------------------------------------------+
148 | 0 | Operation is not implemented. |
149 +----------+-------------------------------------------------------------+
150 | 1 | Operation is only accessible through firmware. |
151 +----------+-------------------------------------------------------------+
152 | 2 | Operation is blocked for OS by firmware configuration. |
153 +----------+-------------------------------------------------------------+
154 | 3 | Operation is allowed and physically present user required. |
155 +----------+-------------------------------------------------------------+
156 | 4 | Operation is allowed and physically present user is not |
158 +----------+-------------------------------------------------------------+
160 The location of the table is given by the fw_cfg tpmppi_address field.
161 The PPI memory region size is 0x400 (TPM_PPI_ADDR_SIZE) to leave
162 enough room for future updates.
165 QEMU files related to TPM ACPI tables:
166 - hw/i386/acpi-build.c
167 - include/hw/acpi/tpm.h
170 = TPM backend devices =
172 The TPM implementation is split into two parts, frontend and backend. The
173 frontend part is the hardware interface, such as the TPM TIS interface
174 described earlier, and the other part is the TPM backend interface. The backend
175 interfaces implement the interaction with a TPM device, which may be a physical
176 or an emulated device. The split between the front- and backend devices allows
177 a frontend to be connected with any available backend. This enables the TIS
178 interface to be used with the passthrough backend or the (future) swtpm backend.
181 QEMU files related to TPM backends:
183 - include/sysemu/tpm_backend.h
184 - include/sysemu/tpm_backend_int.h
187 == The QEMU TPM passthrough device ==
189 In case QEMU is run on Linux as the host operating system it is possible to
190 make the hardware TPM device available to a single QEMU guest. In this case the
191 user must make sure that no other program is using the device, e.g., /dev/tpm0,
192 before trying to start QEMU with it.
194 The passthrough driver uses the host's TPM device for sending TPM commands
195 and receiving responses from. Besides that it accesses the TPM device's sysfs
196 entry for support of command cancellation. Since none of the state of a
197 hardware TPM can be migrated between hosts, virtual machine migration is
198 disabled when the TPM passthrough driver is used.
200 Since the host's TPM device will already be initialized by the host's firmware,
201 certain commands, e.g. TPM_Startup(), sent by the virtual firmware for device
202 initialization, will fail. In this case the firmware should not use the TPM.
204 Sharing the device with the host is generally not a recommended usage scenario
205 for a TPM device. The primary reason for this is that two operating systems can
206 then access the device's single set of resources, such as platform configuration
207 registers (PCRs). Applications or kernel security subsystems, such as the
208 Linux Integrity Measurement Architecture (IMA), are not expecting to share PCRs.
211 QEMU files related to the TPM passthrough device:
212 - hw/tpm/tpm_passthrough.c
217 Command line to start QEMU with the TPM passthrough device using the host's
218 hardware TPM /dev/tpm0:
220 qemu-system-x86_64 -display sdl -accel kvm \
221 -m 1024 -boot d -bios bios-256k.bin -boot menu=on \
222 -tpmdev passthrough,id=tpm0,path=/dev/tpm0 \
223 -device tpm-tis,tpmdev=tpm0 test.img
225 The following commands should result in similar output inside the VM with a
226 Linux kernel that either has the TPM TIS driver built-in or available as a
229 #> dmesg | grep -i tpm
230 [ 0.711310] tpm_tis 00:06: 1.2 TPM (device=id 0x1, rev-id 1)
233 [ 0.000000] ACPI: TCPA 0x0000000003FFD191C 000032 (v02 BOCHS \
234 BXPCTCPA 0000001 BXPC 00000001)
237 crw-------. 1 root root 10, 224 Jul 11 10:11 /dev/tpm0
239 #> find /sys/devices/ | grep pcrs$ | xargs cat
240 PCR-00: 35 4E 3B CE 23 9F 38 59 ...
242 PCR-23: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ...
245 == The QEMU TPM emulator device ==
247 The TPM emulator device uses an external TPM emulator called 'swtpm' for
248 sending TPM commands to and receiving responses from. The swtpm program
249 must have been started before trying to access it through the TPM emulator
252 The TPM emulator implements a command channel for transferring TPM commands
253 and responses as well as a control channel over which control commands can
254 be sent. The specification for the control channel can be found here:
256 https://github.com/stefanberger/swtpm/blob/master/man/man3/swtpm_ioctls.pod
259 The control channel serves the purpose of resetting, initializing, and
260 migrating the TPM state, among other things.
262 The swtpm program behaves like a hardware TPM and therefore needs to be
263 initialized by the firmware running inside the QEMU virtual machine.
264 One necessary step for initializing the device is to send the TPM_Startup
265 command to it. SeaBIOS, for example, has been instrumented to initialize
266 a TPM 1.2 or TPM 2 device using this command.
269 QEMU files related to the TPM emulator device:
270 - hw/tpm/tpm_emulator.c
275 The following commands start the swtpm with a UnixIO control channel over
276 a socket interface. They do not need to be run as root.
279 swtpm socket --tpmstate dir=/tmp/mytpm1 \
280 --ctrl type=unixio,path=/tmp/mytpm1/swtpm-sock \
283 Command line to start QEMU with the TPM emulator device communicating with
286 qemu-system-x86_64 -display sdl -accel kvm \
287 -m 1024 -boot d -bios bios-256k.bin -boot menu=on \
288 -chardev socket,id=chrtpm,path=/tmp/mytpm1/swtpm-sock \
289 -tpmdev emulator,id=tpm0,chardev=chrtpm \
290 -device tpm-tis,tpmdev=tpm0 test.img
293 In case SeaBIOS is used as firmware, it should show the TPM menu item
294 after entering the menu with 'ESC'.
297 1. DVD/CD [ata1-0: QEMU DVD-ROM ATAPI-4 DVD/CD]
304 The following commands should result in similar output inside the VM with a
305 Linux kernel that either has the TPM TIS driver built-in or available as a
308 #> dmesg | grep -i tpm
309 [ 0.711310] tpm_tis 00:06: 1.2 TPM (device=id 0x1, rev-id 1)
312 [ 0.000000] ACPI: TCPA 0x0000000003FFD191C 000032 (v02 BOCHS \
313 BXPCTCPA 0000001 BXPC 00000001)
316 crw-------. 1 root root 10, 224 Jul 11 10:11 /dev/tpm0
318 #> find /sys/devices/ | grep pcrs$ | xargs cat
319 PCR-00: 35 4E 3B CE 23 9F 38 59 ...
321 PCR-23: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ...
324 === Migration with the TPM emulator ===
326 The TPM emulator supports the following types of virtual machine migration:
328 - VM save / restore (migration into a file)
330 - Snapshotting (migration into storage like QoW2 or QED)
332 The following command sequences can be used to test VM save / restore.
335 In a 1st terminal start an instance of a swtpm using the following command:
338 swtpm socket --tpmstate dir=/tmp/mytpm1 \
339 --ctrl type=unixio,path=/tmp/mytpm1/swtpm-sock \
340 --log level=20 --tpm2
342 In a 2nd terminal start the VM:
344 qemu-system-x86_64 -display sdl -accel kvm \
345 -m 1024 -boot d -bios bios-256k.bin -boot menu=on \
346 -chardev socket,id=chrtpm,path=/tmp/mytpm1/swtpm-sock \
347 -tpmdev emulator,id=tpm0,chardev=chrtpm \
348 -device tpm-tis,tpmdev=tpm0 \
352 Verify that the attached TPM is working as expected using applications inside
355 To store the state of the VM use the following command in the QEMU monitor in
358 (qemu) migrate "exec:cat > testvm.bin"
361 At this point a file called 'testvm.bin' should exists and the swtpm and QEMU
362 processes should have ended.
364 To test 'VM restore' you have to start the swtpm with the same parameters
365 as before. If previously a TPM 2 [--tpm2] was saved, --tpm2 must now be
366 passed again on the command line.
368 In the 1st terminal restart the swtpm with the same command line as before:
370 swtpm socket --tpmstate dir=/tmp/mytpm1 \
371 --ctrl type=unixio,path=/tmp/mytpm1/swtpm-sock \
372 --log level=20 --tpm2
374 In the 2nd terminal restore the state of the VM using the additional
377 qemu-system-x86_64 -display sdl -accel kvm \
378 -m 1024 -boot d -bios bios-256k.bin -boot menu=on \
379 -chardev socket,id=chrtpm,path=/tmp/mytpm1/swtpm-sock \
380 -tpmdev emulator,id=tpm0,chardev=chrtpm \
381 -device tpm-tis,tpmdev=tpm0 \
382 -incoming "exec:cat < testvm.bin" \
386 Troubleshooting migration:
388 There are several reasons why migration may fail. In case of problems,
389 please ensure that the command lines adhere to the following rules and,
390 if possible, that identical versions of QEMU and swtpm are used at all
394 - QEMU command line parameters should be identical apart from the
395 '-incoming' option on VM restore
396 - swtpm command line parameters should be identical
398 VM migration to 'localhost':
399 - QEMU command line parameters should be identical apart from the
400 '-incoming' option on the destination side
401 - swtpm command line parameters should point to two different
402 directories on the source and destination swtpm (--tpmstate dir=...)
403 (especially if different versions of libtpms were to be used on the
406 VM migration across the network:
407 - QEMU command line parameters should be identical apart from the
408 '-incoming' option on the destination side
409 - swtpm command line parameters should be identical
412 - QEMU command line parameters should be identical
413 - swtpm command line parameters should be identical
416 Besides that, migration failure reasons on the swtpm level may include
419 - the versions of the swtpm on the source and destination sides are
421 - downgrading of TPM state may not be supported
422 - the source and destination libtpms were compiled with different
423 compile-time options and the destination side refuses to accept the
425 - different migration keys are used on the source and destination side
426 and the destination side cannot decrypt the migrated state
427 (swtpm ... --migration-key ... )