Examples of vctl Commands

The command-line examples that follow work on VMware Fusion.

Commands Related to Image

When you build a new image, to pull the base image from a private Docker registry successfully, either use the vctl login command to log in to the private Docker registry first or use the --credential option to pass a JSON file that stores credentials to vctl build command for registry authentication. For example:
1. Encode your Docker registry username and password in base64 with the following command:
  echo -n USER:PASSWORD | base64
2. Create a config.json file with your Docker registry URL and the base64 encoded string generated in step 1.
```
{
                           "auths": {
                                          "https://index.docker.io/v2/": {
                                                         "auth": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
                                         }
                            }
}
```
3. Build the new image whose base image is in a private Docker registry, by passing the JSON file to vctl build command:
  vctl build --file Dockerfile --tag docker.io/mynamespace/myrepo:1.0 --credential config.json .

Commands Related to Container

List running containers.
vctl ps
List all containers, including the running containers and stopped containers.
vctl ps --all
Run a container in detached mode using the nginx image, which is the same as docker.io/library/nginx:latest.
vctl run --name myContainer -d nginx
Run a container using the --publish option and the fluentd image, here fluentd is equivalent to docker.io/library/fluentd:latest.
vctl run --name myContainer --publish 24224:24224/udp --publish 24224:24224 fluentd
Run multiple containers and enable discovery and communication with each other.
- The vctl utility doesn't have a subnet or a link feature to connect multiple containers to a subnet.
  
  To enable communication between multiple containers, start the container with the --publish option. This binds the container port to the host port so that the service provided by the container is accessible from the outside.
vctl run --name mydb -m 2048 -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=password -p 3306:3306 mysql
vctl run --name mymatomo -m 4096 -p 8080:80 -e MATOMO_DATABASE_HOST=<Host_IP>:3306 matomo
Run a container using the --volume option and the bonita image, here bonita is equivalent to docker.io/library/bonita:latest.
vctl run --name myContainer -p 8080:8080 --volume ~/Documents/container:/opt/bonita bonita

Commands Related to CRX VM

Get shell access to a CRX VM.
- By specifying the container hosted by the CRX VM.
  vctl execvm --sh -c myContainer
- By specifying the vmx path of the CRX VM.
  Note: To get the vmx path, run the vctl describe myContainer command and refer to the Host virtual machine value in the output.
  vctl execvm --sh <Home_Folder_of_Your_Account>/.vctl/.r/vms/myContainer/myContainer.vmx
Execute a command within a CRX VM.
- By specifying the container hosted by the CRX VM.
  vctl execvm -c myContainer /bin/ls
- By specifying the vmx path of the CRX VM.
  Note: To get the vmx path, run the vctl describe myContainer command and refer to the Host virtual machine value in the output.
  vctl execvm <Home_Folder_of_Your_Account>/.vctl/.r/vms/myContainer/myContainer.vmx /bin/ls