INSTALLING THE OPENSTACK CLIENT

In order to interact with the openstack API you will need to install the client. In this example, I am going to install the client in a python virtual environment. This gives me the option of installing and switching between different versions of the client.

PREREQUISITES

Warning

The openstack client only supports python 2.7 at the moment.

Install python and pip on centos

sudo yum -y install epel-release
sudo yum -y install python python-devel python-pip gcc
sudo pip install --upgrade pip
sudo pip install virtualenv

Once the packages are installed, create a folder for your virtual environments. I am naming the folder ‘venvs’ and changing into that directory.

mkdir venvs && cd venvs

Create the virtual environment

[centos@osp-client venvs]$ python -m virtualenv openstack_client
  No LICENSE.txt / LICENSE found in source
New python executable in /home/centos/venvs/openstack_client/bin/python2
Also creating executable in /home/centos/venvs/openstack_client/bin/python
Installing setuptools, pip, wheel...
done.
[centos@osp-client venvs]$ ll
total 0
drwxrwxr-x. 5 centos centos 56 Jan 28 12:47 openstack_client

Activate the virtual environment by running the below command. Notice that the prompt changes once activated. I will create a separate post on how you can configure your bash and zsh environments to give you more features and functionality.

[centos@osp-client venvs]$ source openstack_client/bin/activate
(openstack_client) [centos@osp-client venvs]$

Install the all-in-one client

(openstack_client) [centos@osp-client venvs]$ pip install python-openstackclient
To deactivate the virtual environment just type ‘deactivate’.

You will notice that the prompt changes again once the virtual environment is deactivated.

(openstack_client) [centos@osp-client venvs]$ deactivate
[centos@osp-client venvs]$

Using the above process, you can create multiple virtual environments and install different versions of the client as per your requirements.