hile / stellator

Python module for OSX to control VMWare Fusion virtual machines

VMWare Fusion headless VM control scripts

This python module contains scripts for OS X to discover and manage VMware Fusion virtual machines, escpecially VMs running in headless mode that can't be controller directly by VMWare Fusion GUI.

Installing

This code can be installed normally with pip:

pip install stellator

Pip install does not currently include the files from examples directory.

Using the tool

There is just one script called 'stellator' installed to your path. See --help for all arguments what it can do.

In the command line arguments, VM names are case insensitive. You can also use wildcards in VM name arguments

Examples

• stellator list

  Lists detected virtual machines

• stallator status

  Shows status of virtual machines

• stallator status rhel*

  Shows status of virtual machines starting with name rhel

• stellator suspend facebook

  Suspends a VM called facebook

• stellator start zabbix

  Starts a VM called zabbix. If the VM was suspended, it's resumed, otherwise booted.

• stellator stop zabbix

  Shuts down a VM called zabbix.

• stellator details facebook

  Shows some configuration details parsed from the .vmx file and disk configuration.

Configuring for headless VM reboot suspend/resume

Following instructions expect you installed stellator to /usr/local. Adjust paths in the script accordingly if this is not the case.

Example configuration in examples/StartupItems can be used to configure automatic suspend and resume of headless VMs during reboots with:

sudo install -d /Library/StartupItems/StellatorHeadless
sudo cp examples/StartupItems/StellatorHeadless/* /Library/StartupItems/StellatorHeadless/
sudo chown -R root:root /Library/StartupItems/StellatorHeadless/*
sudo chmod 0644 /Library/StartupItems/StellatorHeadless/StartupParameters.plist
sudo chmod 0755 /Library/StartupItems/StellatorHeadless/StellatorHeadless.sh

Naming and Credits

Named after 'stellator' type fusion reactor design. While I don't know a thing about fusion power, I value the efforts by the people who do.

The details how to run VMs as headless are based on the cummunity documentation in:

https://communities.vmware.com/thread/292873?tstart=0

Thanks for finding the details to allow me writing this without too much debugging.