sfencevma / virtualsmc

SMC emulator layer

VirtualSMC

Advanced Apple SMC emulator in the kernel. Requires Lilu for full functioning.

Features

• Supports macOS 10.8 and newer (10.9 and newer is recommended)
• Implements MMIO protocol and interrupt-based responses for compatibility with modern OS
• Properly reports key attributes and r/w protection in the keys
• Allows tuning on per-model basis and allows to use different SMC generations
• Extensible by the plugins for sensor and key addition support
• Enables smcdebug=XX boot argument support on 10.9
• Replaces hardware SMC it finds (to disable SMC entirely you need to flash a dedicated firmware)

Boot arguments

• Add -vsmcdbg to enable debug printing (available in DEBUG binaries).
• Add -vsmcoff to switch off all the Lilu enhancements.
• Add -vsmcbeta to enable Lilu enhancements on unsupported os (10.13 and below are enabled by default).
• Add -vsmcrpt to report about missing SMC keys to the system log.
• Add -vsmccomp to prefer existing hardware SMC implementation if found.
• Add vsmcgen=X to force exposing X-gen SMC device (1 and 2 are supported).
• Add vsmchbkp=X to set HBKP dumping mode (0 - off, 1 - normal, 2 - without encryption).
• Add vsmcslvl=X to set value serialisation level (0 - off, 1 - normal, 2 - with sensitive data (default)).
• Add smcdebug=0xff to enable AppleSMC debug information printing.
• Add watchdog=0 to disable WatchDog timer (if you get accidental reboots).

Credits

• Apple for macOS
• netkas for the original idea of creating a software SMC emulator
• CupertinoNet for reversing most of MMIO protocol and SMC headers
• Alex Ionescu for the initial reverse of SMC firmware
• 07151129 for co-devoloping VirtualSMC and invaluable help during the research
• lvs1974 for developing laptop sensor support
• usr-sse2 for developing laptop sensor support
• joedmru for developing fans and voltage sensor support
• theopolis for smc-fuzzer tool
• kokke for tiny-AES-c
• vit9696 for Lilu.kext and this software
• Additional big thanks go to all the contributors and researchers involved in Apple SMC exploration!