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 This is a z/VM guest running on an IBM SystemZ mainframe.
126 Status: confirmed by RWMJ using a Fedora guest running in z/VM. Not
127 tested whether this also works for Linux installed directly in an
132 =head1 IMPORTANT NOTE
134 Most of the time, using this program is the I<wrong> thing to do.
135 Instead you should detect the specific features you actually want to
136 use. (As an example, if you wanted to issue Xen hypervisor commands
137 you would look for the C</proc/xen/privcmd> file).
139 However people keep asking for this, so we provide it. There are a
144 =item Bug reporting tool
146 If you think that virtualization could affect how your program runs,
147 then you might use C<virt-what> to report this in a bug reporting
150 =item Status display and monitoring tools
152 You might include this information in status and monitoring programs.
158 L<http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-what/>,
159 L<http://www.vmware.com/>,
160 L<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc>,
161 L<http://xensource.com/>,
162 L<http://bellard.org/qemu/>,
163 L<http://kvm.qumranet.com/>,
164 L<http://openvz.org/>
168 Richard W.M. Jones <rjones @ redhat . com>
172 (C) Copyright 2008-2011 Red Hat Inc.,
173 L<http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-what/>
175 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
176 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
177 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
178 (at your option) any later version.
180 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
181 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
182 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
183 GNU General Public License for more details.
185 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
186 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
187 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
189 =head1 REPORTING BUGS
191 Bugs can be viewed on the Red Hat Bugzilla page:
192 L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/>.
194 If you find a bug in virt-what, please follow these steps to report it:
198 =item 1. Check for existing bug reports
200 Go to L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and search for similar bugs.
201 Someone may already have reported the same bug, and they may even
204 =item 2. Capture debug and error messages
208 virt-what > virt-what.log 2>&1
210 and keep I<virt-what.log>. It may contain error messages which you
211 should submit with your bug report.
213 =item 3. Get version of virt-what.
219 =item 4. Submit a bug report.
221 Go to L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and enter a new bug.
222 Please describe the problem in as much detail as possible.
224 Remember to include the version numbers (step 3) and the debug
225 messages file (step 2) and as much other detail as possible.
227 =item 5. Assign the bug to rjones @ redhat.com
229 Assign or reassign the bug to B<rjones @ redhat.com> (without the
230 spaces). You can also send me an email with the bug number if you
231 want a faster response.