VIRT-WHAT(1) Virtualization Support VIRT-WHAT(1)
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
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: not confirmed
ibm_systemz-zvm
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 or RHEV node.
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.
uml This is a User-Mode Linux (UML) guest.
Status: contributed by Laurent Leonard
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:
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
virt-what-1.13 2016-11-05 VIRT-WHAT(1)
Back to main site | Back to man page index