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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-16T11:46:51+00:00

Is there an OS command I can run from within a Xen based virtual

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Is there an OS command I can run from within a Xen based virtual machine to tell me that it is a virtual box rather than a physical box – I heard that the kernel had some self awareness smarts about it. e.g. like an extra column in “ps” output or something? [I know vmstat provides the “st” column but I have seen this on physical host boxes running Linux Kernel 2.6.11 and greater as well].

Many Thanks,

Paul

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Dmesg may give some hints from the kernel message buffer, here is output on a virtualized Ubuntu instance from Slicehost:

    bvm@qdbp:~$ sudo dmesg | grep Xen
[    0.000000]  Xen: 0000000000000000 - 00000000000a0000 (usable)
[    0.000000]  Xen: 00000000000a0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
[    0.000000]  Xen: 0000000000100000 - 0000000010000000 (usable)
[    0.000000] Booting paravirtualized kernel on Xen
[    0.000000] Xen version: 3.1.2-rc1
[    0.000000] Xen: using vcpu_info placement
[    0.000000] Xen: using vcpuop timer interface
[    0.000000] installing Xen timer for CPU 0
[    0.021223] installing Xen timer for CPU 1
[    0.046157] installing Xen timer for CPU 2
[    0.046157] installing Xen timer for CPU 3
[    0.265880] Initialising Xen virtual ethernet driver.
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