Determine when running in a virtual machine

Question

Is there an official way for an application to determine if it is running in VMWare or Virtual PC (or whatever Microsoft is calling it now)? The code I have seen i

Answer 1

I've had good luck with just looking at the MAC address as all manufacturers are given a block and the first 3 parts are unique to them.

//look at the MAC address and determine if it's a Virtual Machine
$temp = preg_split("/\s+/",exec("/sbin/ifconfig -a eth0 2>&1 | /bin/grep HWaddr"), -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
//Virtual Box MACs all start with '08:00:27:xx:xx:xx'
if (strpos($temp[4], '08:00:27') !== false) $_SESSION['DEVELOPMENT'] = true;