systemd-detect-virt - Man Page

Detect execution in a virtualized environment

Examples (TL;DR)

List detectable virtualization technologies: systemd-detect-virt --list
Detect virtualization, print the result, and return a zero status code when running in a VM or a container, and a non-zero code otherwise: systemd-detect-virt
Silently check without printing anything: systemd-detect-virt [-q|--quiet]
Only detect container virtualization: systemd-detect-virt [-c|--container]
Only detect hardware virtualization: systemd-detect-virt [-v|--vm]
Detect whether in a chroot environment: systemd-detect-virt [-r|--chroot]

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
	acrn	ACRN hypervisor^[1]
	apple	Apple virtualization framework^[2]
	sre	LMHS SRE hypervisor^[3]
	google	Google Compute Engine^[4]
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
	podman	Podman^[5] container manager
	rkt	rkt app container runtime
	wsl	Windows Subsystem for Linux^[6]
	proot	proot^[7] userspace chroot/bind mount emulation
	pouch	Pouch^[8] 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.

When executed with --cvm, instead of printing the virtualization technology, it will display the confidential virtual machine technology, if any. The following technologies are currently identified:

Table 2. Known confidential virtualization technologies

Arch	ID	Technology
x86_64	sev	AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization
	sev-es	AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization - Encrypted State
	sev-snp	AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization - Secure Nested Paging
	tdx	Intel Trust Domain Extensions
s390x	protvirt	IBM Protected Virtualization (Secure Execution)
arm64	cca	Arm Confidential Compute Architecture

Options

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