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.

First, you’ll need an OpenStack Nova account and an API key. You get this by using the nova-manage command in OpenStack Nova.

You’ll need to provide nova with your OpenStack username and API key. You can do this with the --os-username, --os-password and --os-tenant-id options, but it’s easier to just set them as environment variables by setting two environment variables:

OS_USERNAME

Your OpenStack Nova username.

OS_PASSWORD

Your password.

OS_TENANT_NAME

Project for work.

OS_AUTH_URL

The OpenStack API server URL.

OS_COMPUTE_API_VERSION

The OpenStack API version.

For example, in Bash you’d use:

export OS_USERNAME=yourname
export OS_PASSWORD=yadayadayada
export OS_TENANT_NAME=myproject
export OS_AUTH_URL=http://...
export OS_COMPUTE_API_VERSION=1.1

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.