Inconsistent messaging for OpenStackClient

As I mentioned earlier in Moving to OpenStackClient CLI I came across several differences in reconciling the legacy CLI tools.

I have also come across very inconsistent messaging. Here is a simple example.

In nova

$ nova list
ERROR (CommandError): You must provide an auth url via either --os-auth-url or env[OS_AUTH_URL] or specify an auth_system which defines a default url with --os-auth-system or env[OS_AUTH_SYSTEM]

In openstack

$ openstack service list
ERROR: openstack Authorization Failed: Cannot authenticate without an auth_url

$ openstack keypair list
ERROR: openstack Authentication requires 'auth_url', which should be specified in 'HTTPClient'

$ openstack catalog list
ERROR: openstack 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'auth'

$ openstack volume list
ERROR: openstack unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'NoneType' and 'str'

All three errors are effectively the same. That is I have not setup environment variables (OS_PROJECT_NAME, OS_AUTH_URL, OS_USERNAME, OS_PASSWORD) or passed all correctly as arguments.

In delving to the openstackclient source code specifically auth.py#147 I see another message “Set an authentication URL, with –os-auth-url, OS_AUTH_URL or auth.auth_url”. api.auth is also referenced in the Authentication Documentation as the place to start.

Time to delve in the code to see what I can find out.

cd
git clone git://git.openstack.org/openstack/python-openstackclient
cd python-openstackclient
python tools/install_venv.py
source .venv/bin/activate
# Don't need sudo for local environment
which openstack

After setting OS_USERNAME, OS_PASSWORD, and OS_PROJECT NAME (and not setting OS_AUTH_URL in my test) I run the following.

$ openstack image list
WARNING: openstackclient.shell Possible error authenticating: Missing parameter(s):
Set an authentication URL, with --os-auth-url, OS_AUTH_URL or auth.auth_url

ERROR: openstack Missing parameter(s):
Set an authentication URL, with --os-auth-url, OS_AUTH_URL or auth.auth_url

This matches what I saw in the code, so it’s the installed version that is older code. While user, service and keypair lists returns the same message volume and catalog still do not.

(.venv)rbradfor@octogon:~/python-openstackclient$ openstack volume list
WARNING: openstackclient.shell Possible error authenticating: Missing parameter(s):
Set an authentication URL, with --os-auth-url, OS_AUTH_URL or auth.auth_url

ERROR: openstack unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'NoneType' and 'str'

(.venv)rbradfor@octogon:~/python-openstackclient$ openstack catalog list
WARNING: openstackclient.shell Possible error authenticating: Missing parameter(s):
Set an authentication URL, with --os-auth-url, OS_AUTH_URL or auth.auth_url

ERROR: openstack 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'auth'
Tagged with: Cloud Computing OpenStack

Related Posts

Improving container security in your CI/CD pipeline

At PyCon AU 2026 , the presentation Your Python container is 90% stuff you didn’t ask for by Scott Norris at Chainguard really exposed the impact of being lazy in container management for security purposes.

Read more

My take on PyCon Australia 2026

PyCon AU 2026 held in Brisbane this week was a five day event for the Python community. With specialized tracks and dedicated tutorial and engineering days there was a wide variety of content available.

Read more

Fixing Old Software Bugs Without Thinking

I previously came across an issue in my benchmarking work where I relied on the Latency Histogram section of sysbench output. On Linux it worked fine — I generally ran my workload there, so it never mattered.

Read more