Is there a command or tool that can be used to determine whether Ubuntu is running as a guest within a virtualization program such as VirtualBox or Qemu or whether it is running on the bare metal?
3 Answers
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.
SUMMARY
sudo virt-what [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 Barış Metin
linux_vserver-host This process is running as the Linux VServer host (VxID 0). Status: contributed by Barış Metin and Elan Ruusamäe
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 Léonard
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 Léonard
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 RWMJSorry but this is your GUY.... ;)
Run lspci and check for the string 'VirtualBox'.
You could run lspci | grep VirtualBox
You could also run lsusb and check the string 'VirtualBox'. Such as lsusb | grep VirtualBox
Also dmesg works, run dmesg | grep VirtualBox or dmesg | grep virtual
imvirt (not installed by default but available in in universe repository)
