The print-usage message appears next, with output partially shown in Usage Message.

Next comes the

main()

function, which sets defaults and parses command-line arguments to determine the operation and possibly set options to change defaults. Dynamic loading occurs, if defined. Notice the all-zero initialization of the

VixDiskLibConnectParams

declared structure:

For connections to an ESXi host, credentials including user name and password must be correctly supplied in the

-user

and

-password

command-line arguments. Both the

-host

name of the ESXi host and its

-vm

inventory path (

vmxSpec

) must be supplied. When set, these values populate the

cnxParams

structure. Initialize all parameters, especially

vmxSpec

, or else the connection might behave unexpectedly.

A call to

VixDiskLib_Init()

initializes the library. In a production application, you can supply appropriate

log

,

warn

, and

panic

functions as parameters, in place of NULL.

A call to

VixDiskLib_Connect()

creates a connection to disk. If host

cnxParams.serverName

is null, as it is without the

-host

argument, a connection is made to hosted disk on the local host. Otherwise a connection is made to managed disk on the remote host. With

-ssmoref

argument, advanced transport is used.

Next, an appropriate function is called for the requested operation, followed by error information if applicable. Finally, the

main()

function closes the library connection to disk and exits.