The nova Shell Utility¶

The nova shell utility interacts with OpenStack Nova API from the command line. It supports the entirety of the OpenStack Nova API.

You’ll need to provide nova with your OpenStack Keystone user information. You can do this with the –os-username, –os-password, –os-project-name (–os-project-id), –os-project-domain-name (–os-project-domain-id) and –os-user-domain-name (–os-user-domain-id) options, but it’s easier to just set them as environment variables by setting some environment variables:

OS_USERNAME¶

Your OpenStack Keystone user name.

OS_PASSWORD¶

Your password.

OS_PROJECT_NAME¶

The name of project for work.

OS_PROJECT_ID¶

The ID of project for work.

OS_PROJECT_DOMAIN_NAME¶

The name of domain containing the project.

OS_PROJECT_DOMAIN_ID¶

The ID of domain containing the project.

OS_USER_DOMAIN_NAME¶

The user’s domain name.

OS_USER_DOMAIN_ID¶

The user’s domain ID.

OS_AUTH_URL¶

The OpenStack Keystone endpoint URL.

OS_COMPUTE_API_VERSION¶

The OpenStack Nova API version (microversion).

OS_REGION_NAME¶

The Keystone region name. Defaults to the first region if multiple regions are available.

For example, in Bash you’d use:

export OS_USERNAME=yourname
export OS_PASSWORD=yadayadayada
export OS_PROJECT_NAME=myproject
export OS_PROJECT_DOMAIN_NAME=default
export OS_USER_DOMAIN_NAME=default
export OS_AUTH_URL=http://<url-to-openstack-keystone>/identity
export OS_COMPUTE_API_VERSION=2.1

From there, all shell commands take the form:

nova <command> [arguments...]

Run nova help to get a full list of all possible commands, and run nova help <command> to get detailed help for that command.