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.
30 The guest appears to be running inside an OpenVZ or Virtuozzo
33 Status: contributed by Evgeniy Sokolov
39 Status: confirmed by RWMJ.
45 Status: confirmed by RWMJ.
49 This is a User-Mode Linux (UML) guest.
51 Status: contributed by Laurent Léonard
55 This is a VirtualBox guest.
57 Status: contributed by Laurent Léonard
61 The guest appears to be running on Microsoft VirtualPC.
67 The guest appears to be running on VMware.
69 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
73 The guest appears to be running on Xen.
75 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
79 This is the Xen dom0 (privileged domain).
81 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
85 This is a Xen domU (paravirtualized guest domain).
87 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
91 This is a Xen guest fully virtualized (HVM).
93 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
99 Most of the time, using this program is the I<wrong> thing to do.
100 Instead you should detect the specific features you actually want to
101 use. (As an example, if you wanted to issue Xen hypervisor commands
102 you would look for the C</proc/xen/privcmd> file).
104 However people keep asking for this, so we provide it. There are a
109 =item Bug reporting tool
111 If you think that virtualization could affect how your program runs,
112 then you might use C<virt-what> to report this in a bug reporting
115 =item Status display and monitoring tools
117 You might include this information in status and monitoring programs.
123 L<http://www.libvirt.org/>,
124 L<http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/>,
125 L<http://www.vmware.com/>,
126 L<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc>,
127 L<http://xensource.com/>,
128 L<http://bellard.org/qemu/>,
129 L<http://kvm.qumranet.com/>,
130 L<http://openvz.org/>
134 Richard W.M. Jones <rjones @ redhat . com>
138 (C) Copyright 2008 Red Hat Inc.,
139 L<http://libvirt.org/>
141 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
142 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
143 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
144 (at your option) any later version.
146 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
147 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
148 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
149 GNU General Public License for more details.
151 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
152 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
153 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
155 =head1 REPORTING BUGS
157 Bugs can be viewed on the Red Hat Bugzilla page:
158 L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/>.
160 If you find a bug in virt-what, please follow these steps to report it:
164 =item 1. Check for existing bug reports
166 Go to L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and search for similar bugs.
167 Someone may already have reported the same bug, and they may even
170 =item 2. Capture debug and error messages
174 virt-what > virt-what.log 2>&1
176 and keep I<virt-what.log>. It may contain error messages which you
177 should submit with your bug report.
179 =item 3. Get version of virt-what and version of libvirt.
185 =item 4. Submit a bug report.
187 Go to L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and enter a new bug.
188 Please describe the problem in as much detail as possible.
190 Remember to include the version numbers (step 3) and the debug
191 messages file (step 2).
193 =item 5. Assign the bug to rjones @ redhat.com
195 Assign or reassign the bug to B<rjones @ redhat.com> (without the
196 spaces). You can also send me an email with the bug number if you
197 want a faster response.