The OpenStackClient container installer script

Currently this tool is optimised to work with the Catalyst Cloud, feel free to take your own copy and make it work for the cloud vendor of your choice.

Just Give Me The Tools!

If all you really care about is getting your hands on a working version of the container then simply run the following install command from a Linux shell to have a copy installed locally.

OpenStackClient container install command

bash <(wget -qO - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/catalyst-cloud/openstackclient-container/master/fetch-installer.sh) -a ccloud -u https://api.cloud.catalyst.net.nz:5000/v3

Overview

To provide the OpenstackClient command line tools pre-installed, with all of it's dependencies, in a docker container.

The Installer Script

The purpose of this script (fetch-installer.sh) is to simplify the process of obtaining and configuring the OpenStackClient container. The command shown below is going to download a copy of the installer script to the user's machine and run it. That script, in turn, creates a launcher script and places a copy in the directory specified by the user, creating this directory in the process if it does not already exist.

Finally it adds an alias in the user's .bash_aliases file to allow them to run commands and pass them directly to the OpenStackClient command line tool.

Using The Alias

Here is an example of the default alias created by the installer script in the .bash_aliases file:

alias ccloud='<install_dir>/osclient-container'

A typical openstackclient commands looks something like this:

openstack server list

The alias created by the script takes the place of openstack keyword in the command shown above. So in order to run a command through the openstackclient within the container the format would be like this:

ccloud server list

This is done in order to differentiate calls to the container versus calls to a locally installed version of the openstack client, should one exist.

The Launcher Script

This script (osclient-container-install.sh) provides a means to launch a pre-configured docker container that will provide the user with a working instance of the OpenStackClient. The script perfoms the following actions:

• asking for an installation directory, the default is $HOME

• checks for a valid docker installation, see install docker or take a look at the install_docker.sh script in this repository for an outline of the steps required to achieve this on an ubuntu workstation.

• retrieving the latest version of the OpenStackClient container, see here for more information . If a copy exists locally it will be used first, if it is the latest stable version.

• ensuring that valid OpenStack cloud credentials are available, in the following order of precedence:

  • check the current shell for existing OpenStack authentication environment variables
  • check for the existence of a valid openrc file using the naming style '*-openrc.sh', located in the directory ${HOME}/.openrc.
  • prompt the user to supply valid OpenStack cloud username and password

• once the user is authenticated via supplied credentials it will provide a list of valid cloud projects and cloud regions for the user to select from.

  NOTE: if the user is prompted to provide their credentials these details, along with the initial choice of cloud region and cloud project, will be stored in local configuration files in plaint text.

Launcher configuration

The installer script currently allows the user to provide two additional parameters when being invoked. To use the parameters described below simply append them to the end of the install command leaving one space after the closing parentheses as shown here.

The parameters support both short and long forms.

bash <(wget https://install-file-location) --parameter parameter-value

Specifying the tool alias

The first is the alias name that will be used to invoke the tool once it is installed. By default this is set to be osc. In order to override this append the following parameter followed by your preferred alias name.

-a your-alias

or

--alias your-alias

Specifying the AUTH_URL

The second variable to be aware of is the AUTH_URL value that will connect you to your OpenStack cloud provider. This currently defaults to Catalyst Cloud if none is provided at install time.

-u https://an.openstack.vendor:5000

or

--url https://an.openstack.vendor:5000

Credential management

If you do not wish to be prompted for your cloud credentials every time you run an openstack command via the alias it would pay to do one of the following. The preferred method allows you to your password just once as it will store it locally in an environment variable, the alternative option will still require a password on each run.

The preferred method

• simply run the tool via the alias and it will interactively prompt you for your cloud credentials and then store these in configuration files located in your $HOME directory.

By default these files will be

  $HOME/openstackclient-tool/config
  $HOME/openstackclient-tool/credentials

The alternatives

• source your *-openrc.sh file in the current terminal session prior to running any openstackclient-container commands
• create a directory called ${HOME}/.openrc place a copy of your *-openrc.sh file in there. The container will detect this and prompt you for your cloud account's password.

Note:
At the current time this tool only supports v3 of the keystone identity service.