Can a guest find out its host operating system?

[Emile]

Is there a way for the guest operating system to find out what operating system is running on the VM host?

Nmap os fingerprinting perhaps? Or is there something less fancy?

[socratis]

Is there a way for the guest operating system to find out what operating system is running on the VM host?

Hmmm... Quite an interesting question. My 0.02€ says that it should not, otherwise what would be the role of the abstraction layer? You can definitely identify if you are within a VM, just not sure if (let's say, in my case) you're running under OSX 10.6.8 or 10.7.5. Or is this too much info and simply a Win32 vs Win64 would do? If I may ask so, why???

[noteirak]

AFAIK this is not possible, as socratis said, being the whole point of the abstraction.

[Emile]

You can definitely identify if you are within a VM,

Yes, for example with virt-what.

Or is this too much info and simply a Win32 vs Win64 would do?

A simple Windows or Mac or Linux etc. would do.

If I may ask so, why???

For the software project we're working on (Whonix), we believe some host operating systems aren't the right tool for several reasons. Detecting that inside the VM and information about that would be a nice improvement.

AFAIK this is not possible, as socratis said, being the whole point of the abstraction.

I was afraid there is no such way. Thank you for confirmation.