3 virt-what - detect if we are running in a virtual machine
11 C<virt-what> is a shell script which can be used to detect if the
12 program is running in a virtual machine.
14 The program prints out a list of "facts" about the virtual machine,
15 derived from heuristics. One fact is printed per line.
17 If nothing is printed and the script exits with code 0 (no error),
18 then it can mean I<either> that the program is running on bare-metal
19 I<or> the program is running inside a type of virtual machine which we
20 don't know about or cannot detect.
28 The guest appears to be running inside an OpenVZ or Virtuozzo
31 Status: contributed by Evgeniy Sokolov
37 Status: confirmed by RWMJ. Currently we have no way to
38 tell the difference between QEMU and KVM guests.
42 The guest appears to be running on Microsoft VirtualPC.
48 The guest appears to be running on VMware.
54 The guest appears to be running on Xen.
56 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
60 This is the Xen dom0 (privileged domain).
62 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
66 This is a Xen domU (normal guest domain).
68 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
74 Most of the time, using this program is the I<wrong> thing to do.
75 Instead you should detect the specific features you actually want to
76 use. (As an example, if you wanted to issue Xen hypervisor commands
77 you would look for the C</proc/xen/privcmd> file).
79 However people keep asking for this, so we provide it. There are a
84 =item Bug reporting tool
86 If you think that virtualization could affect how your program runs,
87 then you might use C<virt-what> to report this in a bug reporting
90 =item Status display and monitoring tools
92 You might include this information in status and monitoring programs.
98 L<http://www.libvirt.org/>,
99 L<http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/>,
100 L<http://www.vmware.com/>,
101 L<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc>,
102 L<http://xensource.com/>,
103 L<http://bellard.org/qemu/>,
104 L<http://kvm.qumranet.com/>,
105 L<http://openvz.org/>
109 Richard W.M. Jones <rjones @ redhat . com>
113 (C) Copyright 2008 Red Hat Inc.,
114 L<http://libvirt.org/>
116 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
117 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
118 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
119 (at your option) any later version.
121 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
122 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
123 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
124 GNU General Public License for more details.
126 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
127 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
128 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
130 =head1 REPORTING BUGS
132 Bugs can be viewed on the Red Hat Bugzilla page:
133 L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/>.
135 If you find a bug in virt-what, please follow these steps to report it:
139 =item 1. Check for existing bug reports
141 Go to L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and search for similar bugs.
142 Someone may already have reported the same bug, and they may even
145 =item 2. Capture debug and error messages
149 virt-what > virt-what.log 2>&1
151 and keep I<virt-what.log>. It may contain error messages which you
152 should submit with your bug report.
154 =item 3. Get version of virt-what and version of libvirt.
160 =item 4. Submit a bug report.
162 Go to L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and enter a new bug.
163 Please describe the problem in as much detail as possible.
165 Remember to include the version numbers (step 3) and the debug
166 messages file (step 2).
168 =item 5. Assign the bug to rjones @ redhat.com
170 Assign or reassign the bug to B<rjones @ redhat.com> (without the
171 spaces). You can also send me an email with the bug number if you
172 want a faster response.