How to manage credentials

See also: Credential <credential

This document shows how to manage credentials in Juju.

Add a credential

See also: credential-definition, List of supported clouds

The procedure for how to add a cloud credential to Juju depends on whether the cloud is a machine (traditional, non-Kubernetes) cloud or rather a Kubernetes cloud.

Add a credential for a machine cloud

Tip

If your cloud is a local LXD cloud and if you are a Juju admin user: Your cloud credential is set up and retrieved automatically for you, so you can skip this step. Run juju credentials to confirm. (If you are not a Juju admin user, run autoload-credentials.)

1. Choose a cloud authentication type and collect the information required for that type from your cloud account.

Caution

The authentication types and the information needed for each type depend on your chosen cloud. Run juju show-cloud or consult the cloud Reference doc to find out.

2. Provide this information to Juju. You may do so in three ways – interactively, by specifying a YAML file, or automatically, by having Juju check your local YAML files or environment variables.

Caution

In general, we recommend the interactive method – the latter two are both error-prone, and the last one is not available for all clouds.

2a. To add a credential interactively, run the add-credential command followed by the name of your machine cloud. For example:

juju add-credential aws

This will start an interactive session where you’ll be asked to choose a cloud region (if applicable), specify a credential name (you can pick any name you want), and then provide the credential information (e.g., access key, etc.)

The command also offers various flags that you can use to provide all this information in one go (e.g., the path to a YAML file containing the credential definition) as an alternative to the interactive session.

2b. To add a credential by specifying a YAML file, use your credential information to prepare a credentials.yaml file, then run the add-credential command with the -f flag followed by the path to this file.

2c. To add a credential automatically, use your credential information to prepare a credentials.yaml file / environment variables, then run the autoload-credentials command:

juju autoload-credentials

Juju will scan your local credentials files / environment variables / rc files and, if it detects something suitable for the present cloud, it will display a prompt asking you to confirm the addition of the credential and to specify a name for it.

The command also allows you to restrict the search to a specific cloud, a specific controller, etc.

Add a credential for a Kubernetes cloud

For a Kubernetes cloud, credential definitions are added automatically when you add the cloud definition to Juju. Run juju credentials to verify.

View all the known credentials

To see a list of all the known credentials, run the credentials command:

juju credentials

This should output something similar to this:

Controller Credentials:
Cloud           Credentials
lxd             localhost*

Client Credentials:
Cloud   Credentials
aws     bob*, carol
google  wayne

where the asterisk denotes the default credential for a given cloud.

By passing various flags, you can also choose to view just the credentials known to the client, or just those for a particular controller; you can select a different output format or an output file (and also choose to include secrets); etc.

See more: juju credentials

View details about a credential

You can view details about all your credentials at once or just about a specific credential.

All credentials. To view details about all your credentials at once, run the show-credential command with no argument:

juju show-credential

By passing various flags you can filter by controller, select an output format or an output file, etc.

A specific credential. To view details about just one specific credential, run the show-credential command followed by the name of the cloud and the name of the credential. For example:

juju show-credential mycloud mycredential

By passing various flags you can specify an output format or an output file, display secret attributes, etc.

Set the default credential

Set. To set the default credential for a cloud on the current client, run the default-credential command followed by the name of the cloud and the name of the credential. For example:

juju default-credential aws carol

Get. To view the currrently set default credential for a cloud, run the default-credential command followed by the name of the cloud. For example:

juju default-credential aws

This should display the default credential.

Add a credential to a model

Caution

You can only do this if you are a controller admin or a model owner.

To add a controller credential to a model, run the set-credential command followed by a flag for the intended model, the host cloud, and the name of the credential. For example:

juju set-credential -m trinity aws bob

Important

If the credential is only known to the client, this will first upload it to the controller and then relate it to the model.

Tip

This command does not affect any existing relations between the credential and other models. If the credential is already related to a single model, this operation will just cause the credential to be related to two models.

Update a credential

To update a credential, run the update-credential command followed by the name of the cloud and the name of the credential. For example:

juju update-credential mycloud mycredential

This will start an interactive session where you will be asked to specify various parameters for the update.

By passing various flags, you can also perform this operation in-line. And by dropping the credential (and the cloud) argument and passing a flag with a credential YAMl file, you can also update all your credentials at once.

Remove a credential

To remove a credential, run the remove-credential command followed by the name of the cloud and the name of the credential. For example:

juju remove-credential mycloud mycredential

This will start an interactive session where you will be asked to choose whether to apply this operation for the client or a specific controller or both. You can bypass this by using the client and controller flags in-line.