Le Blog des Cloutier et des Vilhuber

something in my vmware server setup at home is malfunctioning – I cannot
reliably get to the web interface. There used to be a command line interface,
but they totally changed that between VM server 1.0 and 2.0….

… but it is there: so here, for my memory and your enlightenment, what I
succeeded in doing:

sudo vmware-vimsh -r -e “hostsvc/connect localhost 902; hostsvc/login; ”

(you need to do this as root, since it uses an SSL key that is stored in a
root-only directory under /etc/vmware)

You now are at some sort of shell. Documentation is at
http://www.vi-toolkit.com/wiki/index.php/Vimsh

I wanted to create a snapshot of one of my VMs. So:

[/]$ hostsvc/login vilhuber XXXXXXX

[/]$ vmsvc/snapshot.create

Insufficient arguments.

Usage: snapshot.create vmid [snapshotName] [snapshotDescription] [includeMemory]

 [quiesced]

Creates a snapshot for the vm.

[/]$ vmsvc/getallvms

[/]$ vmsvc/snapshot.create 256

Create Snapshot:

[/]$ vmsvc/message 256

No message.

[/]$ vmsvc/get.snapshotinfo 256

(vim.vm.SnapshotInfo) {

   dynamicType = <unset>,

   currentSnapshot = 'vim.vm.Snapshot:256-snapshot-14',

   rootSnapshotList = (vim.vm.SnapshotTree) [

      (vim.vm.SnapshotTree) {

         dynamicType = <unset>,

         snapshot = 'vim.vm.Snapshot:256-snapshot-14',

         vm = 'vim.VirtualMachine:256',

         name = "VMware Server Undopoint",

         description = "",

         createTime = "2010-01-29T14:07:42.280165-05:00",

         state = "poweredOff",

         quiesced = false,

         backupManifest = <unset>,

         replaySupported = false,

      }

   ],

}