The script requires the update URL, which is easy to get manually from the appliance web interface, but I want to automate the update.
I found that the default update URL is stored in
/opt/vmware/var/lib/vami/update/provider/provider-deploy.xmland the user-entered update URL is stored in
/opt/vmware/var/lib/vami/update/provider/provider-runtime.xml
The appliances come with some command-line tools to parse XML; I'm using xmllint:
echo 'cat //property[@name="repositoryAddress"]/@value' | \ xmllint --shell /opt/vmware/var/lib/vami/update/provider/provider-deploy.xml | \ grep httpsThe output:
value="https://vapp-updates.vmware.com/vai-catalog/valm/vmw/05d561bc-f3c8-4115-bd9d-22baf13f7178/5.8.1.12927.latest"