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+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+======================================
+s390 (IBM Z) Boot/IPL of Protected VMs
+======================================
+
+Summary
+-------
+The memory of Protected Virtual Machines (PVMs) is not accessible to
+I/O or the hypervisor. In those cases where the hypervisor needs to
+access the memory of a PVM, that memory must be made accessible.
+Memory made accessible to the hypervisor will be encrypted. See
+Documentation/virt/kvm/s390-pv.rst for details."
+
+On IPL (boot) a small plaintext bootloader is started, which provides
+information about the encrypted components and necessary metadata to
+KVM to decrypt the protected virtual machine.
+
+Based on this data, KVM will make the protected virtual machine known
+to the Ultravisor (UV) and instruct it to secure the memory of the
+PVM, decrypt the components and verify the data and address list
+hashes, to ensure integrity. Afterwards KVM can run the PVM via the
+SIE instruction which the UV will intercept and execute on KVM's
+behalf.
+
+As the guest image is just like an opaque kernel image that does the
+switch into PV mode itself, the user can load encrypted guest
+executables and data via every available method (network, dasd, scsi,
+direct kernel, ...) without the need to change the boot process.
+
+
+Diag308
+-------
+This diagnose instruction is the basic mechanism to handle IPL and
+related operations for virtual machines. The VM can set and retrieve
+IPL information blocks, that specify the IPL method/devices and
+request VM memory and subsystem resets, as well as IPLs.
+
+For PVMs this concept has been extended with new subcodes:
+
+Subcode 8: Set an IPL Information Block of type 5 (information block
+for PVMs)
+Subcode 9: Store the saved block in guest memory
+Subcode 10: Move into Protected Virtualization mode
+
+The new PV load-device-specific-parameters field specifies all data
+that is necessary to move into PV mode.
+
+* PV Header origin
+* PV Header length
+* List of Components composed of
+ * AES-XTS Tweak prefix
+ * Origin
+ * Size
+
+The PV header contains the keys and hashes, which the UV will use to
+decrypt and verify the PV, as well as control flags and a start PSW.
+
+The components are for instance an encrypted kernel, kernel parameters
+and initrd. The components are decrypted by the UV.
+
+After the initial import of the encrypted data, all defined pages will
+contain the guest content. All non-specified pages will start out as
+zero pages on first access.
+
+
+When running in protected virtualization mode, some subcodes will result in
+exceptions or return error codes.
+
+Subcodes 4 and 7, which specify operations that do not clear the guest
+memory, will result in specification exceptions. This is because the
+UV will clear all memory when a secure VM is removed, and therefore
+non-clearing IPL subcodes are not allowed.
+
+Subcodes 8, 9, 10 will result in specification exceptions.
+Re-IPL into a protected mode is only possible via a detour into non
+protected mode.
+
+Keys
+----
+Every CEC will have a unique public key to enable tooling to build
+encrypted images.
+See `s390-tools <https://github.com/ibm-s390-linux/s390-tools/>`_
+for the tooling.