How do I setup the OpenStack CLI?

To set up the OpenStack CLI, you must have a machine running Linux. This can be your own hardware or a Qube. If you have a Windows machine, you can install the OpenStack CLI using WSL. You can find more information on how to install WSL here. We will be running CentOS Stream 9 for the purposes of this guide.

Setting up the OpenRC file.

First we’ll need to create an API user and get an OpenRC file. Go to Cloud -> API Users. Click the blue plus icon.

Give your API user a name, a password, and optionally a description. Now click Create. Once your API user has been created. click the download arrow to download the OpenRC file.

Now, login or SSH into your Linux instance. Create a file on your Linux machine and copy the contents of your OpenRC file to it.

Creating and Activating a Python Virtual Environment

In a default CentOS 9 Stream installation, the system’s Python executable is /usr/libexec/platform-python and is what will be used to create the virtual environment.

Use /usr/libexec/platform-python -m venv ~/venv to create a virtual environment in path ~/venv

Next, we’ll use source ~/venv/bin/activate to activate the virtual environment.

Installing OpenStackClient

Before installing OpenStackClient we should upgrade pipto ensure the installation goes smoothly. You can upgrade pip by using pip install -—upgrade pip

Now that we have prepared everything, we can install the OpenSttackClient.

There exist two OpenStackClient packages:python-openstackclient and openstackclient. We recommend using python-openstackclient because it is maintained much more frequently than the prior package.

Install OpenStackClient using pip install python-openstackclient

Activate User Authentication

The previously created OpenRC file is now used to set environment variables related to authentication.

For example, source ~/openrc.sh Enter the password you set for the API user.

With all of that done, you can use openstack server list to ensure you’ve installed the OpenStackClient correctly.