VMware Communities: How do I install, start, shut down, and ...

VMware

Up to Discussions in vSphere Guest SDK

Sample Code
Tech Exchange

vSphere Guest SDK:

This Question is Possibly Answered

1 "correct" answer available (10 pts) 2 "helpful" answers available (6 pts)

2 Replies Last post: Nov 10, 2009 8:58 AM by MichaelIS

How do I install, start, shut down, and suspend VMs via command line? posted: Sep 3, 2009 6:17 PM

Romanadvoratr…

2 posts since
Sep 3, 2009

I've installed ESXi 4.0 on a computer, and would like to create and manage VMs via command line (via SSH). I tried installing the command line tools on Linux, but the commands don't work - they complain about some missing PERL library, and I haven't been able to get them to work.

I have gotten some command line access to work by using the console to enable ssh access, and then sshing in from another host, but despite going through teh command line documentation, it's still not clear to me how to do this. So here's what I want to do:

1) Create one or more virtual machines (say, with Linux or Windows server running on them)

2) Power on a VM

3) Suspend a VM

4) Wake a suspended VM

5) Power off a VM

6) Shut down the machine hosting ESXi.

7) Get actual CPU usage for a hosted VM.

Can someone please tell me what the correct commands are to do this? Even if you know just one, it would be helpful.

Thanks!

Re: How do I install, start, shut down, and suspend VMs via command line?

1. Sep 5, 2009 6:30 PM

in response to: Romanadvoratr…

Romanadvoratr…

2 posts since
Sep 3, 2009

Ok. after much consulting with a PERL expert, it turns out that there is a bug in the PERL install in Ubuntu Server 9.04. Here is the bug, and how to solve it:

When trying to use VMWare ESXi's command line commands, I got a bug where the wrong perl libraries appeared to be linked, causing teh program to fail. Here is the error that I got running the command /usr/bin/vmware-cmd:

Hyperia:/usr/bin> vmware-cmd
/usr/bin/perl: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/perl/5.10/auto/XML/LibXML/Common/Common.so: undefined symbol: Perl_Tstack_sp_ptr

The solution appears to be to do the following:
sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev make build-essential
sudo cpan -fi XML::LibXML::Common XML::LibXML Class::MethodMaker

I'm using Ubuntu Server 9.04, in its default install configuration, with the LAMP and OpenSSH server options installed.

When working correctly, the same command gives:
Hyperia:/usr/sbin> vmware-cmd
Enter username:

Re: How do I install, start, shut down, and suspend VMs via command line?

2. Nov 10, 2009 8:58 AM

in response to: Romanadvoratr…

MichaelIS

1 posts since
Sep 22, 2009

Your post is several months old so I don't know if you have resolved this problem. There are other command line tools which do not utilize perl. vmrun is a compiled binary and I do not believe it utilizes perl libs at all although I could be wrong. VMware provides a sample program with one of the SDK's, "vmrun.pl" which utilizes perl and provides similar functionality to the vmrun command.

"vmrun list" list will display running vm's on the current host.

"vmrun -T ws -gu root -gp password stop /path/to/vm.vmx", will shutdown a host

"vmrun -T ws start vm.vmx", will start a vm.

With ssh you could, "ssh usr@host vmrun -T ws start vm.vmx" to start a vm from some other host.

Note that some of the commands require vmtools installed in the guest OS. Also, the path requires escaping special characters.

Go to original post