To manage files in the OpenStack cloud you need the swift client. This is not so tiny python tool (a lot of dependencies), which offers by means of files (as files are objects for the OpenStack):
- delete – Delete files, directories and sub-directories. Be careful with a simple command you can delete all your files at once. “Delete a container or objects within a container.”
- download – Download files to your local storage. “Download objects from containers.”
- list – List all files in the main directory (i.e. the container), cannot be listed files in sub-directories. The output will be a file with path per line or you can enable extended output to show file size, time modified, the type of the file and the full file path. “Lists the containers for the account or the objects for a container.”
- post – Creates containers and updates metadata, could create seurity keys for temporary urls – “Updates meta information for the account, container, or object; creates containers if not present.”
- copy – Copy files to a new place within a container or to a different container. “Copies object, optionally adds meta”
- stat – Display information for files, container and your account. No information is available per directory. Most typically you will read the file length, the type and modifcation date. “Displays information for the account, container, or object”
- upload – uploads files and whole directories in a container – “Uploads files or directories to the given container.” You can read our article here – Upload files and directories with swift in OpenStack
- capabilities – List the configuration options of your account like file size limits, file amount limits , limit requests per seconds and so on and which additional middleware your instance supports like bulk_delete, bulk_upload (the name are self-explainatory) – “List cluster capabilities.”
- tempurl – Generate a temporary url for a file protected with time validity and a key – “Create a temporary URL.”
- auth – Show your authentication token and storage url – “Display auth related environment variables.”
The text in the hyphens is from the swift help command. If you do not know what is a container with simple words these are the main sub-directories in your account if you use the list command without any argument (not adding a name after “list”):
myuser@myserver:~$ swift --os-username myusr --os-tenant-name myusr --os-password mypass --os-auth-url https://auth01.example.com:5000/v2.0 list mycontainer1 anyname
The best way is to install the swift client from the package system of your Linux Distribution. The package system ensures the programs you install and upgrade are consistent within dependencies upgrades.
When you install this package “python-swiftclient” it depends on multiple python packages, which might be upgraded later, too, but the package system of a Linux distribution ensure the programs of python-swiftclient will work with them
. On the contrary, if you install it manually even with “pip” as it is offered in OpenStack site it is unsure what will happen and even your client program from “python-swiftclient” could stop working because of an upgraded dependancy library. Of course, the packages from the official package system could be a little bit older (but probably more stable) than the manual installs from the OpenStack official site. Still if you would like to install it with “pip” here you can check how you can do it: https://www.swiftstack.com/docs/integration/python-swiftclient.html
Keep on reading!