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.
28 =item B<alibaba_cloud>
30 =item B<alibaba_cloud-ebm>
32 This is a cloud computing service based on Alibaba Cloud.
34 Status: contributed by Weisson.
40 Note that virt-what will print this fact for baremetal AWS instances,
41 which you might not consider to be true virtualization. In this case
42 other facts (eg. C<kvm> or C<xen>) would I<not> be present.
44 Status: contributed by Qi Guo, Vitaly Kuznetsov, confirmed by RWMJ.
48 This is a bhyve (FreeBSD hypervisor) guest.
50 Status: contributed by Leonardo Brondani Schenkel.
54 This is a Docker container.
56 Status: confirmed by Charles Nguyen
60 This is running on Google Cloud Platform / Google Compute Engine.
66 This is Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor.
68 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
70 =item B<ibm_power-kvm>
72 This is an IBM POWER KVM guest.
74 Status: contributed by Adrian Likins.
76 =item B<ibm_power-lpar_shared>
78 =item B<ibm_power-lpar_dedicated>
80 This is an IBM POWER LPAR (hardware partition) in either shared
83 Status: contributed by Adrian Likins.
87 This is an IBM SystemZ (or other S/390) hardware partitioning system.
88 Additional facts listed below may also be printed.
90 =item B<ibm_systemz-direct>
92 This is Linux running directly on a IBM SystemZ hardware partitioning
95 This is expected to be a highly unusual configuration - if
96 you see this result you should treat it with suspicion.
100 =item B<ibm_systemz-lpar>
102 This is Linux running directly on an LPAR on an IBM SystemZ
103 hardware partitioning system.
105 Status: confirmed by Thomas Huth
107 =item B<ibm_systemz-zvm>
109 This is a z/VM guest running in an LPAR on an IBM SystemZ
110 hardware partitioning system.
112 Status: confirmed by RWMJ using a Fedora guest running in z/VM
114 =item B<ibm_systemz-kvm>
116 This is a KVM guest running on an IBM System Z hardware system.
118 Status: contributed by Thomas Huth
122 The guest appears to be running on an Linux SPARC system with
123 Oracle VM Server for SPARC (Logical Domains) support.
125 Status: contributed by Darren Kenny
127 =item B<ldoms-control>
129 The is the Oracle VM Server for SPARC (Logical Domains) control domain.
131 Status: contributed by Darren Kenny
135 The is the Oracle VM Server for SPARC (Logical Domains) guest domain.
137 Status: contributed by Darren Kenny
141 The is the Oracle VM Server for SPARC (Logical Domains) I/O domain.
143 Status: contributed by Darren Kenny
147 The is the Oracle VM Server for SPARC (Logical Domains) Root domain.
149 Status: contributed by Darren Kenny
151 =item B<linux_vserver>
153 This is printed for backwards compatibility with older virt-what which
154 could not distinguish between a Linux VServer container guest and
157 =item B<linux_vserver-guest>
159 This process is running in a Linux VServer container.
161 Status: contributed by Barış Metin
163 =item B<linux_vserver-host>
165 This process is running as the Linux VServer host (VxID 0).
167 Status: contributed by Barış Metin and Elan Ruusamäe
171 This process is running in a Linux LXC container.
173 Status: contributed by Marc Fournier
177 This guest is running on the KVM hypervisor using hardware
180 Note that if the hypervisor is using software acceleration
181 you should I<not> see this, but should see the C<qemu> fact
184 Status: confirmed by RWMJ.
188 This guest is running on the KVM hypervisor using hardware
189 acceleration, and the userspace component of the hypervisor
190 is lkvm (a.k.a kvmtool).
192 Status: contributed by Andrew Jones
196 The guest is running inside Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV).
198 Status: confirmed by RWMJ.
202 The guest appears to be running inside an OpenVZ or Virtuozzo
205 Status: contributed by Evgeniy Sokolov
209 The guest is running on an oVirt node.
210 (See also C<rhev> below).
212 Status: contributed by RWMJ, not confirmed
216 The guest is running inside Parallels Virtual Platform
217 (Parallels Desktop, Parallels Server).
219 Status: contributed by Justin Clift
223 This is a Podman container.
225 Status: contributed by Jordan Webb
227 =item B<powervm_lx86>
229 The guest is running inside IBM PowerVM Lx86 Linux/x86 emulator.
231 Status: data originally supplied by Jeffrey Scheel, confirmed by
232 Yufang Zhang and RWMJ
236 This is QEMU hypervisor using software emulation.
238 Note that for KVM (hardware accelerated) guests you should I<not> see
241 Status: confirmed by RWMJ.
245 The guest is running on a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) node.
247 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
251 This is a User-Mode Linux (UML) guest.
253 Status: contributed by Laurent Léonard
257 Some sort of virtualization appears to be present, but we are not sure
258 what it is. In some very rare corner cases where we know that
259 virtualization is hard to detect, we will try a timing attack to see
260 if certain machine instructions are running much more slowly than they
261 should be, which would indicate virtualization. In this case, the
262 generic fact C<virt> is printed.
266 This is Hitachi Virtualization Manager (HVM) Virtage
267 hardware partitioning system.
269 Status: data supplied by Bhavna Sarathy, not confirmed
273 This is a VirtualBox guest.
275 Status: contributed by Laurent Léonard
279 The guest appears to be running on Microsoft VirtualPC.
281 Status: not confirmed
285 This is a vmm (OpenBSD hypervisor) guest.
287 Status: contributed by Jasper Lievisse Adriaanse.
291 The guest appears to be running on VMware hypervisor.
293 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
297 The guest appears to be running on Xen hypervisor.
299 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
303 This is the Xen dom0 (privileged domain).
305 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
309 This is a Xen domU (paravirtualized guest domain).
311 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
315 This is a Xen guest fully virtualized (HVM).
317 Status: confirmed by RWMJ
323 Programs that use or wrap C<virt-what> should check that the exit
324 status is 0 before they attempt to parse the output of the command.
326 A non-zero exit status indicates some error, for example, an
327 unrecognized command line argument. If the exit status is non-zero
328 then the output "facts" (if any were printed) cannot be guaranteed and
331 The exit status does I<not> have anything to do with whether the
332 program is running on baremetal or under virtualization, nor with
333 whether C<virt-what> managed detection "correctly" (which is basically
334 unknowable given the large variety of virtualization systems out there
335 and that some systems deliberately emulate others).
337 =head1 RUNNING VIRT-WHAT FROM OTHER PROGRAMS
339 C<virt-what> is designed so that you can easily run it from
340 other programs or wrap it up in a library.
342 Your program should check the exit status (see the section above).
344 Some programming languages (notably Python: issue 1652) erroneously
345 mask the C<SIGPIPE> signal and do not restore it when executing
346 subprocesses. C<virt-what> is a shell script and some shell commands
347 do not work correctly when you do this. You may see warnings from
348 C<virt-what> similar to this:
350 echo: write error: Broken pipe
352 The solution is to set the C<SIGPIPE> signal handler back to C<SIG_DFL>
353 before running C<virt-what>.
355 =head1 IMPORTANT NOTE
357 Most of the time, using this program is the I<wrong> thing to do.
358 Instead you should detect the specific features you actually want to
359 use. (As an example, if you wanted to issue Xen hypervisor commands
360 you would look for the C</proc/xen/privcmd> file).
362 However people keep asking for this, so we provide it. There are a
367 =item Bug reporting tool
369 If you think that virtualization could affect how your program runs,
370 then you might use C<virt-what> to report this in a bug reporting
373 =item Status display and monitoring tools
375 You might include this information in status and monitoring programs.
377 =item System tuning (sometimes)
379 You might use this program to tune an operating system so it runs
380 better as a virtual machine of a particular hypervisor. However if
381 installing paravirtualized drivers, it's better to check for the
382 specific features your drivers need (eg. for the presence of PCI devices).
388 L<http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-what/>,
389 L<http://www.vmware.com/>,
390 L<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc>,
391 L<http://xensource.com/>,
392 L<http://bellard.org/qemu/>,
393 L<http://kvm.qumranet.com/>,
394 L<http://openvz.org/>
398 Richard W.M. Jones <rjones @ redhat . com>
402 (C) Copyright 2008-2015 Red Hat Inc.,
403 L<http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-what/>
405 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
406 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
407 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
408 (at your option) any later version.
410 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
411 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
412 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
413 GNU General Public License for more details.
415 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
416 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
417 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
419 =head1 REPORTING BUGS
421 Bugs can be viewed on the Red Hat Bugzilla page:
422 L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/>.
424 If you find a bug in virt-what, please follow these steps to report it:
428 =item 1. Check for existing bug reports
430 Go to L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and search for similar bugs.
431 Someone may already have reported the same bug, and they may even
434 =item 2. Capture debug and error messages
438 virt-what > virt-what.log 2>&1
440 and keep I<virt-what.log>. It may contain error messages which you
441 should submit with your bug report.
443 =item 3. Get version of virt-what.
449 =item 4. Submit a bug report.
451 Go to L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and enter a new bug.
452 Please describe the problem in as much detail as possible.
454 Remember to include the version numbers (step 3) and the debug
455 messages file (step 2) and as much other detail as possible.
457 =item 5. Assign the bug to rjones @ redhat.com
459 Assign or reassign the bug to B<rjones @ redhat.com> (without the
460 spaces). You can also send me an email with the bug number if you
461 want a faster response.