VMW

A specialized virtual machine workspace setup designed for researching edge technology and virtualization features on Windows.

Automates the build and management of a KVM guest running Windows, fully configured for Hyper-V, HVCI, nested virtualization, GPU passthrough, or performance-optimized bare-metal CPUID passthrough.

Currently tested exclusively on AMD CPU architectures.

---

Description

VMW turns one YAML profile into a full virtualization stack a custom kernel, a custom QEMU, custom OVMF firmware, and a libvirt domain definition. Each layer has a patch set under patches/. The patches change the values that guest software can read: CPUID leaves, MSR behavior, firmware tables, SMBIOS strings, and TPM identity.

The research target is VMAware, an open-source VM-detection library. and other ring-0 checks

Quick start

git clone --single-branch --depth=1 https://github.com/meowdiocre/vmw
cd vmw/
pip install -e .           # installs the `vmw` command

vmw                        # launch the dashboard TUI
vmw plan aptwannabe        # review what a setup would run, execute nothing
vmw setup aptwannabe       # run the full build headless

Documentation

This README covers what the project is. Everything else lives on the documentation site, built from docs/:

• Usage : CLI commands, profile format, patch workflow.
• QEMU / Firmware / TPM / Kernel why.
• Operations : VM profile notes, known gaps, useful commands.
• Roadmap : current detection status.

Prerequisites

• git, python3 (3.11+); pip install -e . pulls the rest
• A supported Linux distribution
• UEFI/BIOS settings: CPU virtualization extensions (VT-x / AMD-V), IOMMU support (VT-d / AMD-Vi)
• A dGPU for passthrough (recommended)

Credits

Based on AutoVirt.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later.