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.
38 Status: confirmed by RWMJ.
42 The guest appears to be running inside an OpenVZ or Virtuozzo
45 Status: contributed by Evgeniy Sokolov
49 The guest is running inside IBM PowerVM Lx86 Linux/x86 emulator.
51 Status: data supplied by Jeffrey Scheel, not confirmed
57 Status: confirmed by RWMJ.
61 This is a User-Mode Linux (UML) guest.
63 Status: contributed by Laurent Léonard
67 This is Hitachi Virtualization Manager (HVM) Virtage logical partitioning.
69 Status: data supplied by Bhavna Sarathy, not confirmed
73 This is a VirtualBox guest.
75 Status: contributed by Laurent Léonard
79 The guest appears to be running on Microsoft VirtualPC.
85 The guest appears to be running on VMware.
87 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
91 The guest appears to be running on Xen.
93 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
97 This is the Xen dom0 (privileged domain).
99 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
103 This is a Xen domU (paravirtualized guest domain).
105 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
109 This is a Xen guest fully virtualized (HVM).
111 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
115 =head1 IMPORTANT NOTE
117 Most of the time, using this program is the I<wrong> thing to do.
118 Instead you should detect the specific features you actually want to
119 use. (As an example, if you wanted to issue Xen hypervisor commands
120 you would look for the C</proc/xen/privcmd> file).
122 However people keep asking for this, so we provide it. There are a
127 =item Bug reporting tool
129 If you think that virtualization could affect how your program runs,
130 then you might use C<virt-what> to report this in a bug reporting
133 =item Status display and monitoring tools
135 You might include this information in status and monitoring programs.
141 L<http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-what/>,
142 L<http://www.vmware.com/>,
143 L<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc>,
144 L<http://xensource.com/>,
145 L<http://bellard.org/qemu/>,
146 L<http://kvm.qumranet.com/>,
147 L<http://openvz.org/>
151 Richard W.M. Jones <rjones @ redhat . com>
155 (C) Copyright 2008-2011 Red Hat Inc.,
156 L<http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-what/>
158 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
159 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
160 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
161 (at your option) any later version.
163 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
164 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
165 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
166 GNU General Public License for more details.
168 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
169 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
170 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
172 =head1 REPORTING BUGS
174 Bugs can be viewed on the Red Hat Bugzilla page:
175 L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/>.
177 If you find a bug in virt-what, please follow these steps to report it:
181 =item 1. Check for existing bug reports
183 Go to L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and search for similar bugs.
184 Someone may already have reported the same bug, and they may even
187 =item 2. Capture debug and error messages
191 virt-what > virt-what.log 2>&1
193 and keep I<virt-what.log>. It may contain error messages which you
194 should submit with your bug report.
196 =item 3. Get version of virt-what and version of libvirt.
202 =item 4. Submit a bug report.
204 Go to L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and enter a new bug.
205 Please describe the problem in as much detail as possible.
207 Remember to include the version numbers (step 3) and the debug
208 messages file (step 2).
210 =item 5. Assign the bug to rjones @ redhat.com
212 Assign or reassign the bug to B<rjones @ redhat.com> (without the
213 spaces). You can also send me an email with the bug number if you
214 want a faster response.