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