On Sun, Jun 14, 2026 at 01:18:35AM +0200, OpenBSD Bugreport wrote: > > Synopsis: > On Intel i7 CPU Core(TM) i7 CPU 870 OpenBSD 7.9 generic kernel does not > recognise vmm/vmd CPU option VMX/EPT. > > > Category: > vm vmm CPU Option VMX/EPT not recognised > > > Environment: > System : OpenBSD 7.9 > Details : OpenBSD 7.9 (GENERIC.MP) #449: Wed May 6 13:17:25 MDT > 2026 > [email protected]:/usr/src/sys/arch/amd64/compile/GENERIC.MP > > Architecture: OpenBSD.amd64 > Machine : amd64 > > > Description: > On Intel i7 CPU Core(TM) i7 CPU 870 OpenBSD 7.3 generic kernel recognized its > capability for vmm/vmd VMX/EPT with no problem (vmm0 at mainbus0: VMX/EPT). > With OpenBSD 7.9 generic kernel no vmm/vmd CPU option VMX/EPT is recognised > on the same hardware. No vm's can be used with OpenBSD 7.9. No vmm0 recognised > fw_update done. no change > fw_update: add none; update none; keep intel,radeondrm > syspatch done. No change > > > How-To-Repeat: > dmesg on OpenBSD 7.9 > dmesg | egrep '(VMX/EPT|SVM/RVI)' > fw_update > dmesg on OpenBSD 7.3 > dmesg | egrep '(VMX/EPT|SVM/RVI)' > vmm0 at mainbus0: VMX/EPT > > > Fix: > No clue
Support for this 15+ year old family of CPUs was removed almost a year ago. Continuing to support them was getting in the way of other improvements. Your option is to stay on 7.7 or lower or update to a newer machine. -ml revision 1.64 date: 2025/09/14 15:52:28; author: mlarkin; state: Exp; lines: +14 -8; commitid: FkSMpCh9jBdyHkDn; require unrestricted guest support for VMX hosts using vmm(4) Support for CPUs that don't allow unrestricted guest support is getting in the way of making progress elsewhere. This diff requires support for unrestricted guest capability in the host CPU. Practically speaking, this means original first-generation Nehalem microarchitecture machines won't be supported anymore. Even before this change, those CPUs were very limited in what guest VMs they could run with vmm(4) anyway - they could only use the -b option to directly boot an OpenBSD kernel, not being able to support a BIOS. This diff adds code to check for the required capabilities, and not attach vmm(4) if we don't detected a supported configuration. FWIW, the CPUs affected by this change are now close to 15 years old. ok dv discussed with deraadt
