How to use OpenStack tokens

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KB0067627

How to use OpenStack tokens


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Objective

This guide provides best practices for performing a large number of OpenStack actions in a short time.

The steps in this guide are based on the Keystone API version 3.0.

Definitions

  • Endpoint: HTTP address pointing directly to a service's API. For example https://auth.cloud.ovh.net/v3/ for the authentication endpoint or https://image.compute.gra11.cloud.ovh.net/ for the GRA11 zone image management endpoint.

  • Token: A unique string of characters used to authenticate and access resources. The user requests it by entering their credentials (login details) to the authentication API. The token is generated and is valid for 24 hours.

  • OpenRC: To improve the efficiency of interactions with the identity service through the OpenStack client, OpenStack supports simple client environment scripts also known as OpenRC files. This is a file containing common options for all clients, but which also supports unique options.

Outline of a request

Most requests sent to the OpenStack API must follow an authorization procedure, which involves generating a token and validating it.

However, if you perform too many actions within a short period of time, some OpenStack actions will fall in error due to too many API Calls. The current limit is 60 token creations per minutes and per OpenStack user. The authentication endpoint will return HTTP 429 errors beyond this limit. See our Public Cloud API Rate Limits guide for more information.

For more information, see the OpenStack API documentation.

This guide will show you how to create an OpenStack token, use it for the actions you want to perform and how to revoke a token.

Requirements

Find more information about this tool in the OpenStack CLI documentation.

You can install the client with the apt (for Debian-based distributions) or the yum (for RHEL/CentOS-based distributions) package manager.

# Debian-based distributions: 

sudo apt install python3-openstackclient

# CentOS-based distributions:

sudo yum install python3-openstackclient

Windows users can follow this guide to export environment variables:

Set OpenStack Environment Variables

Instructions

Step 1: Download and source your OpenRC file

Log in to the OVHcloud Control Panel and open your Public Cloud project. Click on Users & Roles in the Project Management section, then click on the ... button to the right of your OpenStack user.

Download this user's OpenRC file and specify the region where you want to perform actions.

download openRC file

Once downloaded, edit your OpenRC file and add this line:

OS_PASSWORD=<your_password>

Make sure to adapt this line with your OpenStack user password that was given to you when the user was created.

Then source the file you previously downloaded:

source openrc.sh

Step 2: Issuing an OpenStack token

An OpenStack token is valid for 24 hours after it is issued. For greater reliability, you can issue a token every 8 hours (as an example) to avoid actions with an expired token.

If you are considering long-term actions such as snapshots, instance shelving, image creation, etc., prefer creating a new token rather than performing the desired action directly.

Once you have sourced your OpenRC file, run this command to issue a token:

openstack token issue

This command should produce an output similar to the following:

+------------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Field      | Value                                                          |
+------------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| expires    | 2023-04-06T08:33:15+0000                                       |
| id         | gAAAAA[...]                                                    |
| project_id | 8a7[...]                                                       |
| user_id    | f99[...]                                                       |
+------------+----------------------------------------------------------------+

You can now export the ID of the previously issued token:

export OS_TOKEN = gAAAAA[...]

You can also export your token directly with this command: 

export OS_TOKEN=$(openstack token issue -f value -c id)

Step 3: Remove useless variables

In order to use your token to perform actions with your user, you must remove the `OS_USER_DOMAIN_NAME' variable.

To do this, run the following command:

unset OS_USER_DOMAIN_NAME

Step 4: Use the token to run commands

Now that you have your token, you can use classic OpenStack calls to manage your infrastructure.

openstack --os-auth-type token <command>
  • Example: 
openstack --os-auth-type token image list

Step 5: Revoke OpenStack token

Once you performed all the actions you wanted, you can revoke the used token to prevent it from being used for other actions.

To do this, use the following command:

openstack --os-auth-type token token revoke <token_id>

# or 

openstack --os-auth-type token token revoke $OS_TOKEN

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