The cinder shell utility

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

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

OS_USERNAME or CINDER_USERNAME

Your OpenStack Cinder username.

OS_PASSWORD or CINDER_PASSWORD

Your password.

OS_PROJECT_NAME or CINDER_PROJECT_ID

Project for work.

OS_AUTH_URL or CINDER_URL

The OpenStack API server URL.

OS_VOLUME_API_VERSION

The OpenStack Block Storage API version.

For example, in Bash you’d use:

export OS_USERNAME=yourname
export OS_PASSWORD=yadayadayada
export OS_PROJECT_NAME=myproject
export OS_AUTH_URL=http://auth.example.com:5000/v3
export OS_VOLUME_API_VERSION=3

If OS_VOLUME_API_VERSION is not set, the highest version supported by the server will be used.

If OS_VOLUME_API_VERSION exceeds the highest version supported by the server, the highest version supported by both the client and server will be used. A warning message is printed when this occurs.

From there, all shell commands take the form:

cinder <command> [arguments...]

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