Provided by: virt-what_1.13-1_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
hyperv
This is Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor.
Status: confirmed by RWMJ
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: not confirmed
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
linux_vserver
This process is running in a Linux VServer container.
Status: contributed by BarXX Metin
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.
openvz
The guest appears to be running inside an OpenVZ or Virtuozzo container.
Status: contributed by Evgeniy Sokolov
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, confimed 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.
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
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 2008-2011 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.