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
55 This is QEMU using software emulation.
57 Note that for KVM (hardware accelerated) guests you should I<not> see
60 Status: confirmed by RWMJ.
64 This is a User-Mode Linux (UML) guest.
66 Status: contributed by Laurent Léonard
70 This is Hitachi Virtualization Manager (HVM) Virtage logical partitioning.
72 Status: data supplied by Bhavna Sarathy, not confirmed
76 This is a VirtualBox guest.
78 Status: contributed by Laurent Léonard
82 The guest appears to be running on Microsoft VirtualPC.
88 The guest appears to be running on VMware.
90 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
94 The guest appears to be running on Xen.
96 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
100 This is the Xen dom0 (privileged domain).
102 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
106 This is a Xen domU (paravirtualized guest domain).
108 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
112 This is a Xen guest fully virtualized (HVM).
114 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
118 =head1 IMPORTANT NOTE
120 Most of the time, using this program is the I<wrong> thing to do.
121 Instead you should detect the specific features you actually want to
122 use. (As an example, if you wanted to issue Xen hypervisor commands
123 you would look for the C</proc/xen/privcmd> file).
125 However people keep asking for this, so we provide it. There are a
130 =item Bug reporting tool
132 If you think that virtualization could affect how your program runs,
133 then you might use C<virt-what> to report this in a bug reporting
136 =item Status display and monitoring tools
138 You might include this information in status and monitoring programs.
144 L<http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-what/>,
145 L<http://www.vmware.com/>,
146 L<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc>,
147 L<http://xensource.com/>,
148 L<http://bellard.org/qemu/>,
149 L<http://kvm.qumranet.com/>,
150 L<http://openvz.org/>
154 Richard W.M. Jones <rjones @ redhat . com>
158 (C) Copyright 2008-2011 Red Hat Inc.,
159 L<http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-what/>
161 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
162 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
163 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
164 (at your option) any later version.
166 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
167 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
168 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
169 GNU General Public License for more details.
171 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
172 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
173 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
175 =head1 REPORTING BUGS
177 Bugs can be viewed on the Red Hat Bugzilla page:
178 L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/>.
180 If you find a bug in virt-what, please follow these steps to report it:
184 =item 1. Check for existing bug reports
186 Go to L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and search for similar bugs.
187 Someone may already have reported the same bug, and they may even
190 =item 2. Capture debug and error messages
194 virt-what > virt-what.log 2>&1
196 and keep I<virt-what.log>. It may contain error messages which you
197 should submit with your bug report.
199 =item 3. Get version of virt-what and version of libvirt.
205 =item 4. Submit a bug report.
207 Go to L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and enter a new bug.
208 Please describe the problem in as much detail as possible.
210 Remember to include the version numbers (step 3) and the debug
211 messages file (step 2).
213 =item 5. Assign the bug to rjones @ redhat.com
215 Assign or reassign the bug to B<rjones @ redhat.com> (without the
216 spaces). You can also send me an email with the bug number if you
217 want a faster response.