Using the Command-Line Client with the Standalone Server

The new command-line only server (vmwb-server) can be used to run the server manually from any shell. The server must be provided a path to a location to use for a workspace, that is a place to cache log files that are read during the process of log analysis. This workspace location must be unique to this server instance and cannot be shared with other server instances or with the IDE.

When you start the command-line server, it dynamically allocates ports that clients use for communication. The server records these ports in a file in the current users home directory so that when the vmwb-lbcli command-line client starts, it can read these values and know what ports to connect to. This functionality is seamless from your perspective as a user.

Start the command-line server from the command line

1	Open a terminal inside the Workbench virtual machine.

2	The server can be started in the background, for example:

$ vmwb-server /path/to/your/workspace &

The IDE currently is configured to use a fixed default port of 12443 for the server. You can start the server at the command in a mode where it also uses this same default port by doing:

$ vmwb-server /path/to/your/workspace --default-port &

Of course this mode means that you cannot start more than one instance of this server on a given host since it uses the same port number.

If you cannot have the server on the default port, you can manually specify which port(s) you would like it to use. There are actually two ports, one for the web services (12443 by default) and one for an administration interface (12221 by default). In the example that follows, the command is given with a value of 0 (which causes the dynamic allocation of the ports) but you can change this value to anything you wish.

$ vmwb-server /path/to/your/workspace --https-port=0 --admin-port=0 &

The command-line client application for the current user (the user that started the server) will automatically figure out the ports to use.