Provided by: virt-what_1.18-2_amd64 
NAME
virt-what - detect if we are running in a virtual machine
SUMMARY
virt-what [options]
DESCRIPTION
"virt-what" is a shell script which can be used to detect if the program is running in a virtual machine.
The program prints out a list of "facts" about the virtual machine, derived from heuristics. One fact is
printed per line.
If nothing is printed and the script exits with code 0 (no error), then it can mean either that the
program is running on bare-metal or the program is running inside a type of virtual machine which we
don't know about or cannot detect.
FACTS
aws Amazon Web Services cloud guest.
Status: contributed by Qi Guo.
bhyve
This is a bhyve (FreeBSD hypervisor) guest.
Status: contributed by Leonardo Brondani Schenkel.
docker
This is a Docker container.
Status: confirmed by Charles Nguyen
hyperv
This is Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor.
Status: confirmed by RWMJ
ibm_power-kvm
This is an IBM POWER KVM guest.
Status: contributed by Adrian Likins.
ibm_power-lpar_shared
ibm_power-lpar_dedicated
This is an IBM POWER LPAR (hardware partition) in either shared or dedicated mode.
Status: contributed by Adrian Likins.
ibm_systemz
This is an IBM SystemZ (or other S/390) hardware partitioning system. Additional facts listed below
may also be printed.
ibm_systemz-direct
This is Linux running directly on a IBM SystemZ hardware partitioning system.
This is expected to be a highly unusual configuration - if you see this result you should treat it
with suspicion.
Status: not confirmed
ibm_systemz-lpar
This is Linux running directly on an LPAR on an IBM SystemZ hardware partitioning system.
Status: confirmed by Thomas Huth
ibm_systemz-zvm
This is a z/VM guest running in an LPAR on an IBM SystemZ hardware partitioning system.
Status: confirmed by RWMJ using a Fedora guest running in z/VM
ibm_systemz-kvm
This is a KVM guest running on an IBM System Z hardware system.
Status: contributed by Thomas Huth
ldoms
The guest appears to be running on an Linux SPARC system with Oracle VM Server for SPARC (Logical
Domains) support.
Status: contributed by Darren Kenny
ldoms-control
The is the Oracle VM Server for SPARC (Logical Domains) control domain.
Status: contributed by Darren Kenny
ldoms-guest
The is the Oracle VM Server for SPARC (Logical Domains) guest domain.
Status: contributed by Darren Kenny
ldoms-io
The is the Oracle VM Server for SPARC (Logical Domains) I/O domain.
Status: contributed by Darren Kenny
ldoms-root
The is the Oracle VM Server for SPARC (Logical Domains) Root domain.
Status: contributed by Darren Kenny
linux_vserver
This is printed for backwards compatibility with older virt-what which could not distinguish between
a Linux VServer container guest and host.
linux_vserver-guest
This process is running in a Linux VServer container.
Status: contributed by BarXX Metin
linux_vserver-host
This process is running as the Linux VServer host (VxID 0).
Status: contributed by BarXX Metin and Elan Ruusamaee
lxc This process is running in a Linux LXC container.
Status: contributed by Marc Fournier
kvm This guest is running on the KVM hypervisor using hardware acceleration.
Note that if the hypervisor is using software acceleration you should not see this, but should see
the "qemu" fact instead.
Status: confirmed by RWMJ.
lkvm
This guest is running on the KVM hypervisor using hardware acceleration, and the userspace component
of the hypervisor is lkvm (a.k.a kvmtool).
Status: contributed by Andrew Jones
openvz
The guest appears to be running inside an OpenVZ or Virtuozzo container.
Status: contributed by Evgeniy Sokolov
ovirt
The guest is running on an oVirt node. (See also "rhev" below).
Status: contributed by RWMJ, not confirmed
parallels
The guest is running inside Parallels Virtual Platform (Parallels Desktop, Parallels Server).
Status: contributed by Justin Clift
powervm_lx86
The guest is running inside IBM PowerVM Lx86 Linux/x86 emulator.
Status: data originally supplied by Jeffrey Scheel, confirmed by Yufang Zhang and RWMJ
qemu
This is QEMU hypervisor using software emulation.
Note that for KVM (hardware accelerated) guests you should not see this.
Status: confirmed by RWMJ.
rhev
The guest is running on a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) node.
Status: confirmed by RWMJ
uml This is a User-Mode Linux (UML) guest.
Status: contributed by Laurent Leonard
virt
Some sort of virtualization appears to be present, but we are not sure what it is. In some very rare
corner cases where we know that virtualization is hard to detect, we will try a timing attack to see
if certain machine instructions are running much more slowly than they should be, which would
indicate virtualization. In this case, the generic fact "virt" is printed.
virtage
This is Hitachi Virtualization Manager (HVM) Virtage hardware partitioning system.
Status: data supplied by Bhavna Sarathy, not confirmed
virtualbox
This is a VirtualBox guest.
Status: contributed by Laurent Leonard
virtualpc
The guest appears to be running on Microsoft VirtualPC.
Status: not confirmed
vmm This is a vmm (OpenBSD hypervisor) guest.
Status: contributed by Jasper Lievisse Adriaanse.
vmware
The guest appears to be running on VMware hypervisor.
Status: confirmed by RWMJ
xen The guest appears to be running on Xen hypervisor.
Status: confirmed by RWMJ
xen-dom0
This is the Xen dom0 (privileged domain).
Status: confirmed by RWMJ
xen-domU
This is a Xen domU (paravirtualized guest domain).
Status: confirmed by RWMJ
xen-hvm
This is a Xen guest fully virtualized (HVM).
Status: confirmed by RWMJ
EXIT STATUS
Programs that use or wrap "virt-what" should check that the exit status is 0 before they attempt to parse
the output of the command.
A non-zero exit status indicates some error, for example, an unrecognized command line argument. If the
exit status is non-zero then the output "facts" (if any were printed) cannot be guaranteed and should be
ignored.
The exit status does not have anything to do with whether the program is running on baremetal or under
virtualization, nor with whether "virt-what" managed detection "correctly" (which is basically unknowable
given the large variety of virtualization systems out there and that some systems deliberately emulate
others).
RUNNING VIRT-WHAT FROM OTHER PROGRAMS
"virt-what" is designed so that you can easily run it from other programs or wrap it up in a library.
Your program should check the exit status (see the section above).
Some programming languages (notably Python: issue 1652) erroneously mask the "SIGPIPE" signal and do not
restore it when executing subprocesses. "virt-what" is a shell script and some shell commands do not
work correctly when you do this. You may see warnings from "virt-what" similar to this:
echo: write error: Broken pipe
The solution is to set the "SIGPIPE" signal handler back to "SIG_DFL" before running "virt-what".
IMPORTANT NOTE
Most of the time, using this program is the wrong thing to do. Instead you should detect the specific
features you actually want to use. (As an example, if you wanted to issue Xen hypervisor commands you
would look for the "/proc/xen/privcmd" file).
However people keep asking for this, so we provide it. There are a few legitimate uses:
Bug reporting tool
If you think that virtualization could affect how your program runs, then you might use "virt-what"
to report this in a bug reporting tool.
Status display and monitoring tools
You might include this information in status and monitoring programs.
System tuning (sometimes)
You might use this program to tune an operating system so it runs better as a virtual machine of a
particular hypervisor. However if installing paravirtualized drivers, it's better to check for the
specific features your drivers need (eg. for the presence of PCI devices).
SEE ALSO
<http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-what/>, <http://www.vmware.com/>,
<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc>, <http://xensource.com/>,
<http://bellard.org/qemu/>, <http://kvm.qumranet.com/>, <http://openvz.org/>
AUTHORS
Richard W.M. Jones <rjones @ redhat . com>
COPYRIGHT
(C) Copyright 2008-2015 Red Hat Inc., <http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-what/>
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU
General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even
the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write
to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
REPORTING BUGS
Bugs can be viewed on the Red Hat Bugzilla page: <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/>.
If you find a bug in virt-what, please follow these steps to report it:
1. Check for existing bug reports
Go to <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and search for similar bugs. Someone may already have reported
the same bug, and they may even have fixed it.
2. Capture debug and error messages
Run
virt-what > virt-what.log 2>&1
and keep virt-what.log. It may contain error messages which you should submit with your bug report.
3. Get version of virt-what.
Run
virt-what --version
4. Submit a bug report.
Go to <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and enter a new bug. Please describe the problem in as much
detail as possible.
Remember to include the version numbers (step 3) and the debug messages file (step 2) and as much
other detail as possible.
5. Assign the bug to rjones @ redhat.com
Assign or reassign the bug to rjones @ redhat.com (without the spaces). You can also send me an
email with the bug number if you want a faster response.
virt-what-1.18 2018-01-29 VIRT-WHAT(1)