Control program identification

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6.18 LPAR mode z/VM guest KVM guest

For Linux® in LPAR, KVM and z/VM mode, you can provide data about the Linux instance to the control program identification (CPI) feature.

For Linux in LPAR mode, the data is used, for example, to represent the Linux instance on the HMC or SE.

For Linux as KVM guests, the CPI data is stored in the QEMU object model. You can obtain the CPI data by using QEMU monitor protocol (QMP) commands.

You can provide data to the CPI feature in two ways:
  • For settings that are persistent across reboots, set values for one or more settings in the /etc/sysconfig/cpi configuration file. The file is read by the cpi.service at boot. See Providing CPI values through a configuration file.
  • For settings that apply to the running Linux instance only, use the sysfs attributes in /sys/firmware/cpi to change the CPI settings for the running system only. Then transfer the data to the SE.
KVM guests running in secure-execution mode: The CPI data for KVM guests running in secure-execution mode is not sent to the host automatically. To enable sending the data, on the guest, set CPI_PERMIT_ON_PVGUEST to 1 in the /etc/sysconfig/cpi configuration file. For more information, see Introducing IBM® Secure Execution for Linux, SC34-7721.