5 virt-what - detect if we are running in a virtual machine
13 C<virt-what> is a shell script which can be used to detect if the
14 program is running in a virtual machine.
16 The program prints out a list of "facts" about the virtual machine,
17 derived from heuristics. One fact is printed per line.
19 If nothing is printed and the script exits with code 0 (no error),
20 then it can mean I<either> that the program is running on bare-metal
21 I<or> the program is running inside a type of virtual machine which we
22 don't know about or cannot detect.
32 Status: from MSDN description, not tested.
34 =item B<linux_vserver>
36 This process is running in a Linux VServer container.
38 Status: contributed by Barış Metin
44 Status: confirmed by RWMJ.
48 The guest appears to be running inside an OpenVZ or Virtuozzo
51 Status: contributed by Evgeniy Sokolov
55 The guest is running inside IBM PowerVM Lx86 Linux/x86 emulator.
57 Status: data supplied by Jeffrey Scheel, not confirmed
61 This is QEMU using software emulation.
63 Note that for KVM (hardware accelerated) guests you should I<not> see
66 Status: confirmed by RWMJ.
70 This is a User-Mode Linux (UML) guest.
72 Status: contributed by Laurent Léonard
76 This is Hitachi Virtualization Manager (HVM) Virtage logical partitioning.
78 Status: data supplied by Bhavna Sarathy, not confirmed
82 This is a VirtualBox guest.
84 Status: contributed by Laurent Léonard
88 The guest appears to be running on Microsoft VirtualPC.
94 The guest appears to be running on VMware.
96 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
100 The guest appears to be running on Xen.
102 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
106 This is the Xen dom0 (privileged domain).
108 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
112 This is a Xen domU (paravirtualized guest domain).
114 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
118 This is a Xen guest fully virtualized (HVM).
120 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
124 =head1 IMPORTANT NOTE
126 Most of the time, using this program is the I<wrong> thing to do.
127 Instead you should detect the specific features you actually want to
128 use. (As an example, if you wanted to issue Xen hypervisor commands
129 you would look for the C</proc/xen/privcmd> file).
131 However people keep asking for this, so we provide it. There are a
136 =item Bug reporting tool
138 If you think that virtualization could affect how your program runs,
139 then you might use C<virt-what> to report this in a bug reporting
142 =item Status display and monitoring tools
144 You might include this information in status and monitoring programs.
150 L<http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-what/>,
151 L<http://www.vmware.com/>,
152 L<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc>,
153 L<http://xensource.com/>,
154 L<http://bellard.org/qemu/>,
155 L<http://kvm.qumranet.com/>,
156 L<http://openvz.org/>
160 Richard W.M. Jones <rjones @ redhat . com>
164 (C) Copyright 2008-2011 Red Hat Inc.,
165 L<http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-what/>
167 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
168 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
169 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
170 (at your option) any later version.
172 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
173 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
174 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
175 GNU General Public License for more details.
177 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
178 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
179 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
181 =head1 REPORTING BUGS
183 Bugs can be viewed on the Red Hat Bugzilla page:
184 L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/>.
186 If you find a bug in virt-what, please follow these steps to report it:
190 =item 1. Check for existing bug reports
192 Go to L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and search for similar bugs.
193 Someone may already have reported the same bug, and they may even
196 =item 2. Capture debug and error messages
200 virt-what > virt-what.log 2>&1
202 and keep I<virt-what.log>. It may contain error messages which you
203 should submit with your bug report.
205 =item 3. Get version of virt-what and version of libvirt.
211 =item 4. Submit a bug report.
213 Go to L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and enter a new bug.
214 Please describe the problem in as much detail as possible.
216 Remember to include the version numbers (step 3) and the debug
217 messages file (step 2).
219 =item 5. Assign the bug to rjones @ redhat.com
221 Assign or reassign the bug to B<rjones @ redhat.com> (without the
222 spaces). You can also send me an email with the bug number if you
223 want a faster response.