From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753624AbYIYCYZ (ORCPT ); Wed, 24 Sep 2008 22:24:25 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752202AbYIYCYS (ORCPT ); Wed, 24 Sep 2008 22:24:18 -0400 Received: from bombadil.infradead.org ([18.85.46.34]:36838 "EHLO bombadil.infradead.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752016AbYIYCYR (ORCPT ); Wed, 24 Sep 2008 22:24:17 -0400 Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:23:25 -0700 From: Greg KH To: Yan Li Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Ingo Molnar , "H. Peter Anvin" , joerg.roedel@amd.com, rjmaomao@gmail.com, Yinghai Lu , Thomas Gleixner , nancydreaming@gmail.com Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] VMware guest detection for x86 and x86-64 Message-ID: <20080925022325.GA14390@kroah.com> References: <48D12490.5010003@zytor.com> <48da36b9.160d6e0a.22a5.ffffec9d@mx.google.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <48da36b9.160d6e0a.22a5.ffffec9d@mx.google.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.16 (2007-06-09) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 08:22:10PM +0800, Yan Li wrote: > Detects whether we are running as a VMware guest or not. Detection is > based upon DMI vendor string. > > It provides a function: > int is_vmware_guest(void) > that can be used easily to detect if we are running as a VMware guest > or not. Why do we need to do this within the kernel, what is that going to achieve? People can do this easily in userspace if they need to detect this, I think there's a patch for util-linux-ng adding such a simple utility that handles almost all of the known virtualization engines right now. thanks, greg k-h