Checking if a HP-UX system is virtual or not

[Vineet Deshpande]

Hi,

Is there a command or a way in which I can find out if a particular HP-UX machine is Virtual or not?

I think vparstatus -w -M will show me the vpars but this command also requires Superuser.

Is there a command which a normal user can run which will give me this information.

Thanks,

Vineet

[Richard Hepworth]

Vineet,

The following can show you if vPars is installed and whether a vpar database exists but it is not 100% proff that the server is running as a vpar:

/usr/sbin/swlist | grep "Virtual Partitions"
ll /stand/vpdb (check modified time)

Not sure if you can get 100% certainty from non-root user....

regards,

Richard

[Jozef_Novak]

Hello,

if you were referring to HP Integrity Virtual Machines, then "model" command would give you the answer:

#model
ia64 hp server Integrity Virtual Machine

As for vpars, it is not that straightforward, especially if you don't have root access.

J.

[Johnson Punniyalingam]

Hi Vineet,

>>>I think vparstatus -w -M will show me the vpars but this command also requires Superuser.<<<

Yes , You are right normal "user cannot"

>>Is there a command which a normal user can run which will give me this information.<<

No.

Thanks,
Johnson

[Vineet Deshpande]

Hi All,

Thanks a lot for your prompts answers.

I would like to confirm just 1 thing. Are there just the 2 ways in which Virtualization can be implemented in HP viz. vPars and Integrity Servers??

Thanks,

Vineet

[Pete Randall]

Yes, just the two ways - unless you count physical partition: npars.


Pete

[likid0 · Accepted solution]

A normal user can run vecheck:

vecheck(1):
DESCRIPTION
The vecheck command uses its exit status to report whether or not the
command has been run in a virtual partition (vPars) environment. The
result can be used to alter command flow in a script.
...
RETURN VALUE
The vecheck command exits with one of the following values:

0 The command is run in a vPars environment.
255 The command is run in a non-vPars environment.

[Avinash20]

Virtualization in HP-UX OS

1. Vpars
11.11
http://h20392.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=T1335ACE

11.23
http://h20392.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=T1335BCE

11.31
http://h20392.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=T1335CCE

2. HP Virtual Machine
11.23
http://h20392.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=integrity_vm

11.31
http://h20392.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=integrity_vm1131

[Avinash20]

"I have assigned points to 21 of 91 responses to my questions."

Please assign points to your thread. Just a way of saying Thanks for the right answers

[Duncan Edmonstone]

I'm thinking that any OS image that is running in a vPar is going to have the vpard daemon running, so its not an official command, but a reasonable way of checking this would be:

UNIX95= ps -Cvpard >/dev/null 2>&1 && echo "This is a vPar"

Any user can look at the process table so that should work for non-root users.

Of course even within the bounds of a single OS you can't assume you have access to all the CPUs and memory as there is also Processor Sets and the Fair Share Scheduler to consider. Might be worth having a look at this technical paper:

http://docs.hp.com/en/9450/vse_tips_for_application_developers.pdf

HTH

Duncan