how to get an openstack token and validate it?

Question

I followed this guide: http://keystone.openstack.org/api_curl_examples.html

and it seemed that I got a valid token by ran:

curl -d '{"auth":{"passwordCredentials":{"username": "can", "password": "mypassword"}}}' -H "Content-type: application/json" http://url:35357/v2.0/tokens

and it returned:

{
"access": 
{
    "token": 
    {
        "expires": "2012-05-21T14:35:17Z", 
        "id": "468da447bd1c4821bbc5def0498fd441"
    }, 
    "serviceCatalog": {}, 
    "user": 
    {
        "username": "can",
        "roles_links": [],
        "id": "bb6d3a09ad0c4924bf20c1a32ccb5781",
        "roles": [],
        "name": "can"
    }
}
}

but when I came to the next few sections to validate this token, I encountered this magic number: X-Auth-Token:999888777666. At first I thought it's the token I got but I was wrong.

I think I may have missed something, so I read related sections in openstack documents( http://keystone.openstack.org/configuration.html and http://docs.openstack.org/api/openstack-compute/programmer/content/ ), but still no idea how the number comes from.

could anyone explain to me

1. what's the meaning of that magic number
2. how to get the right value of it so I can get a working token to manage other parts of openstack

Answer 1

That magic number (string really) is the admin_token setting in your keystone.conf file. Under the [DEFAULT] section in keystone.conf set

admin_token = abcd1234

If you don't use it for admin actions, you'll see something like

ubuntu@i-000004bc:~/devstack$ curl http://localhost:35357/v2.0/tenants
{"error": {"message": "The request you have made requires authentication.", "code": 401, "title": "Not Authorized"}}

If you do use it, you'll see something like

ubuntu@i-000004bc:~/devstack$ curl -H "X-Auth-Token: abcd1234" http://localhost:35357/v2.0/tenants
{"tenants_links": [], "tenants": [{"enabled": true, "description": null, "name": "demo", "id": "aee8a46babcb4e4286021c8f6ef996cd"}, {"enabled": true, "description": null, "name": "invisible_to_admin", "id": "de17fea45de148ada0a58e998e6c3e73"}, {"enabled": true, "description": null, "name": "admin", "id": "f34b0c8ab30e450489b121fbe723fde5"}, {"enabled": true, "description": null, "name": "service", "id": "fbe3e2e530fd47298cb2cba1b4afa3da"}]}