virt-what

Detect virtualization technology

TLDR

Detect virtualization technology (requires root)

$ sudo virt-what

Log output to file

$ sudo virt-what > [path/to/file]

Display version

$ virt-what --version

virt-what is a shell script that detects if you are running inside a virtual machine. It prints one or more lines identifying the virtualization technology. If nothing is printed, the system is running on bare metal.The tool can detect various hypervisors including KVM, QEMU, Xen (HVM and PV), VMware, VirtualBox, Hyper-V, Docker, LXC, OpenVZ, Podman, and others. Multiple lines may be printed for nested virtualization (e.g., both "kvm" and "hyperv" when running KVM inside Hyper-V).

PARAMETERS

--version

Display version information

OUTPUT VALUES

Common output values include: kvm, qemu, xen, xen-hvm, xen-pv, vmware, virtualbox, hyperv, docker, lxc, openvz, podman, parallels, bhyve, uml (User-Mode Linux).

CAVEATS

Requires root privileges for reliable detection. Some detection methods read DMI data or kernel modules that are only accessible as root. Nested virtualization may produce multiple lines of output. Container detection (Docker, LXC, Podman) is also supported.

HISTORY

virt-what was created by Richard W.M. Jones at Red Hat. It is distributed as part of the virt-what package and is commonly used in provisioning scripts to detect the runtime environment.