OpenStackClient (aka OSC) is a command-line client for OpenStack that brings the command set for Compute, Identity, Image, Object Store and Block Storage APIs together in a single shell with a uniform command structure.

The primary goal is to provide a unified shell command structure and a common language to describe operations in OpenStack.

• PyPi - package installation
• Online Documentation
• Launchpad project - release management
• Blueprints - feature specifications
• Bugs - issue tracking
• Source
• Developer - getting started as a developer
• Contributing - contributing code
• Testing - testing code
• IRC: #openstack-sdks on Freenode (irc.freenode.net)
• License: Apache 2.0

OpenStack Client can be installed from PyPI using pip:

pip install python-openstackclient

There are a few variants on getting help. A list of global options and supported commands is shown with --help:

openstack --help

There is also a help command that can be used to get help text for a specific command:

openstack help
openstack help server create

If you want to make changes to the OpenStackClient for testing and contribution, make any changes and then run:

python setup.py develop

or:

pip install -e .

The CLI is configured via environment variables and command-line options as listed in https://docs.openstack.org/python-openstackclient/latest/cli/authentication.html.

Authentication using username/password is most commonly used:

export OS_AUTH_URL=<url-to-openstack-identity>
export OS_IDENTITY_API_VERSION=3
export OS_PROJECT_NAME=<project-name>
export OS_PROJECT_DOMAIN_NAME=<project-domain-name>
export OS_USERNAME=<username>
export OS_USER_DOMAIN_NAME=<user-domain-name>
export OS_PASSWORD=<password>  # (optional)

The corresponding command-line options look very similar:

--os-auth-url <url>
--os-identity-api-version 3
--os-project-name <project-name>
--os-project-domain-name <project-domain-name>
--os-username <username>
--os-user-domain-name <user-domain-name>
[--os-password <password>]

If a password is not provided above (in plaintext), you will be interactively prompted to provide one securely.

Authentication may also be performed using an already-acquired token and a URL pointing directly to the service API that presumably was acquired from the Service Catalog:

export OS_TOKEN=<token>
export OS_URL=<url-to-openstack-service>

The corresponding command-line options look very similar:

--os-token <token>
--os-url <url-to-openstack-service>