Linux Kernel Journey

Mar 30, 2025 · Fundamentals

Analyzing KVM Misc Device Initialization and Access on Linux

This article walks through the registration of the KVM misc device in the Linux 5.9 kernel for arm64, explains how /dev/kvm is created via misc_register, and demonstrates a user‑space program that opens the device and uses an ioctl to retrieve the KVM API version, with detailed code analysis.