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 a VirtualBox guest.
69 Status: contributed by Laurent Léonard
73 The guest appears to be running on Microsoft VirtualPC.
79 The guest appears to be running on VMware.
81 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
85 The guest appears to be running on Xen.
87 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
91 This is the Xen dom0 (privileged domain).
93 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
97 This is a Xen domU (paravirtualized guest domain).
99 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
103 This is a Xen guest fully virtualized (HVM).
105 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
109 =head1 IMPORTANT NOTE
111 Most of the time, using this program is the I<wrong> thing to do.
112 Instead you should detect the specific features you actually want to
113 use. (As an example, if you wanted to issue Xen hypervisor commands
114 you would look for the C</proc/xen/privcmd> file).
116 However people keep asking for this, so we provide it. There are a
121 =item Bug reporting tool
123 If you think that virtualization could affect how your program runs,
124 then you might use C<virt-what> to report this in a bug reporting
127 =item Status display and monitoring tools
129 You might include this information in status and monitoring programs.
135 L<http://www.libvirt.org/>,
136 L<http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/>,
137 L<http://www.vmware.com/>,
138 L<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc>,
139 L<http://xensource.com/>,
140 L<http://bellard.org/qemu/>,
141 L<http://kvm.qumranet.com/>,
142 L<http://openvz.org/>
146 Richard W.M. Jones <rjones @ redhat . com>
150 (C) Copyright 2008 Red Hat Inc.,
151 L<http://libvirt.org/>
153 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
154 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
155 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
156 (at your option) any later version.
158 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
159 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
160 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
161 GNU General Public License for more details.
163 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
164 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
165 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
167 =head1 REPORTING BUGS
169 Bugs can be viewed on the Red Hat Bugzilla page:
170 L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/>.
172 If you find a bug in virt-what, please follow these steps to report it:
176 =item 1. Check for existing bug reports
178 Go to L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and search for similar bugs.
179 Someone may already have reported the same bug, and they may even
182 =item 2. Capture debug and error messages
186 virt-what > virt-what.log 2>&1
188 and keep I<virt-what.log>. It may contain error messages which you
189 should submit with your bug report.
191 =item 3. Get version of virt-what and version of libvirt.
197 =item 4. Submit a bug report.
199 Go to L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and enter a new bug.
200 Please describe the problem in as much detail as possible.
202 Remember to include the version numbers (step 3) and the debug
203 messages file (step 2).
205 =item 5. Assign the bug to rjones @ redhat.com
207 Assign or reassign the bug to B<rjones @ redhat.com> (without the
208 spaces). You can also send me an email with the bug number if you
209 want a faster response.