systemd-detect-virt(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | EXIT STATUS | SEE ALSO | NOTES | COLOPHON

SYSTEMD-DETECT-VIRT(1)     systemd-detect-virt    SYSTEMD-DETECT-VIRT(1)

NAME         top

       systemd-detect-virt - Detect execution in a virtualized
       environment

SYNOPSIS         top


       systemd-detect-virt [OPTIONS...]

DESCRIPTION         top

       systemd-detect-virt detects execution in a virtualized
       environment. It identifies the virtualization technology and can
       distinguish full machine virtualization from container
       virtualization.  systemd-detect-virt exits with a return value of
       0 (success) if a virtualization technology is detected, and
       non-zero (error) otherwise. By default, any type of
       virtualization is detected, and the options --container and --vm
       can be used to limit what types of virtualization are detected.

       When executed without --quiet will print a short identifier for
       the detected virtualization technology. The following
       technologies are currently identified:

       Table 1. Known virtualization technologies (both VM, i.e. full
       hardware virtualization, and container, i.e. shared kernel
       virtualization)
       ┌───────────┬────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
       │ Type      ID             Product                     │
       ├───────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │ VM        │ qemu           │ QEMU software               │
       │           │                │ virtualization,             │
       │           │                │ without KVM                 │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ kvm            │ Linux KVM kernel            │
       │           │                │ virtual machine,            │
       │           │                │ in combination              │
       │           │                │ with QEMU. Not              │
       │           │                │ used for other              │
       │           │                │ virtualizers using          │
       │           │                │ the KVM                     │
       │           │                │ interfaces, such            │
       │           │                │ as Oracle                   │
       │           │                │ VirtualBox or               │
       │           │                │ Amazon EC2 Nitro,           │
       │           │                │ see below.                  │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ amazon         │ Amazon EC2 Nitro            │
       │           │                │ using Linux KVM             │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ zvm            │ s390 z/VM                   │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ vmware         │ VMware Workstation          │
       │           │                │ or Server, and              │
       │           │                │ related products            │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ microsoft      │ Hyper-V, also               │
       │           │                │ known as Viridian           │
       │           │                │ or Windows Server           │
       │           │                │ Virtualization              │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ oracle         │ Oracle VM                   │
       │           │                │ VirtualBox                  │
       │           │                │ (historically               │
       │           │                │ marketed by                 │
       │           │                │ innotek and Sun             │
       │           │                │ Microsystems), for          │
       │           │                │ legacy and KVM              │
       │           │                │ hypervisor                  │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ powervm        │ IBM PowerVM                 │
       │           │                │ hypervisor — comes          │
       │           │                │ as firmware with            │
       │           │                │ some IBM POWER              │
       │           │                │ servers                     │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ xen            │ Xen hypervisor              │
       │           │                │ (only domU, not             │
       │           │                │ dom0)                       │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ bochs          │ Bochs Emulator              │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ uml            │ User-mode Linux             │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ parallels      │ Parallels Desktop,          │
       │           │                │ Parallels Server            │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ bhyve          │ bhyve, FreeBSD              │
       │           │                │ hypervisor                  │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ qnx            │ QNX hypervisor              │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ acrnACRN hypervisor[1]          │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ appleApple                       │
       │           │                │ Virtualization.framework[2] │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ sreLMHS SRE hypervisor[3]      │
       ├───────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │ Container │ openvz         │ OpenVZ/Virtuozzo            │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ lxc            │ Linux container             │
       │           │                │ implementation by LXC       │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ lxc-libvirt    │ Linux container             │
       │           │                │ implementation by libvirt   │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ systemd-nspawn │ systemd's minimal container │
       │           │                │ implementation, see         │
       │           │                │ systemd-nspawn(1)           │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ docker         │ Docker container manager    │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ podmanPodman[4] container manager │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ rkt            │ rkt app container runtime   │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ wslWindows Subsystem for       │
       │           │                │ Linux[5]                    │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ prootproot[6] userspace          │
       │           │                │ chroot/bind mount emulation │
       │           ├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
       │           │ pouchPouch[7] Container Engine   │
       └───────────┴────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘

       If multiple virtualization solutions are used, only the
       "innermost" is detected and identified. That means if both
       machine and container virtualization are used in conjunction,
       only the latter will be identified (unless --vm is passed).

       Windows Subsystem for Linux is not a Linux container, but an
       environment for running Linux userspace applications on top of
       the Windows kernel using a Linux-compatible interface. WSL is
       categorized as a container for practical purposes. Multiple WSL
       environments share the same kernel and services should generally
       behave like when being run in a container.

OPTIONS         top

       The following options are understood:

       -c, --container
           Only detects container virtualization (i.e. shared kernel
           virtualization).

       -v, --vm
           Only detects hardware virtualization.

       -r, --chroot
           Detect whether invoked in a chroot(2) environment. In this
           mode, no output is written, but the return value indicates
           whether the process was invoked in a chroot() environment or
           not.

           Added in version 228.

       --private-users
           Detect whether invoked in a user namespace. In this mode, no
           output is written, but the return value indicates whether the
           process was invoked inside of a user namespace or not. See
           user_namespaces(7) for more information.

           Added in version 232.

       --cvm
           Detect whether invoked in a confidential virtual machine. The
           result of this detection may be used to disable features that
           should not be used in confidential VMs. It must not be used
           to release security sensitive information. The latter must
           only be released after attestation of the confidential
           environment.

           Added in version 254.

       -q, --quiet
           Suppress output of the virtualization technology identifier.

       --list
           Output all currently known and detectable container and VM
           environments.

           Added in version 239.

       --list-cvm
           Output all currently known and detectable confidential
           virtualization technologies.

           Added in version 254.

       -h, --help
           Print a short help text and exit.

       --version
           Print a short version string and exit.

EXIT STATUS         top

       If a virtualization technology is detected, 0 is returned, a
       non-zero code otherwise.

SEE ALSO         top

       systemd(1), systemd-nspawn(1), chroot(2), namespaces(7)

NOTES         top

        1. ACRN hypervisor
           https://projectacrn.org

        2. Apple Virtualization.framework
           https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization

        3. LMHS SRE hypervisor
           https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/Hardened-Security-for-Intel-Processors.html

        4. Podman
           https://podman.io

        5. Windows Subsystem for Linux
           https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/about

        6. proot
           https://proot-me.github.io/

        7. Pouch
           https://github.com/alibaba/pouch

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the systemd (systemd system and service
       manager) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd⟩.  If you have
       a bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/#bugreports⟩.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/systemd/systemd.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-22.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

systemd 255                                       SYSTEMD-DETECT-VIRT(1)

Pages that refer to this page: org.freedesktop.systemd1(5)systemd.unit(5)systemd.directives(7)systemd.generator(7)systemd.index(7)udev(7)