How to authenticate to the LXD API using bearer tokens¶

To authenticate to the LXD API using a bearer token, first create an identity of type bearer:

lxc auth identity create bearer/<name> [[--group <group> ]]

lxc query --request POST /1.0/auth/identities/bearer --data '{
  "name": "<name>",
  "type": "bearer",
  "groups": [
    "<group>"
  ]
}'

Next, issue a token for the identity:

lxc auth identity token issue bearer/<name> [--expiry <expiry> ]

lxc query --request POST /1.0/auth/identities/bearer/<name>/token --data '{
  "expiry": "<expiry>"
}'

The expiry field accepts multiple space-separated values of the form <number><unit>, such as 1d 3H 5M (1 day, 3 hours, and 5 minutes). Case-sensitive units: years (y), months (m), weeks (w), days (d), hours (H), minutes (M), and seconds (S).

Note the distinction between months (m) and minutes (M): for example, 1m means one month, while 1M means one minute.

The returned token can be used to authenticate with LXD. It must be set as a bearer token in the Authorization header.

You can verify trust by checking the auth field in the response metadata of GET /1.0:

$ curl -k -H "Authorization: Bearer ${TOKEN}" https://<lxd_address>/1.0
{
  ...
  "metadata": {
    "auth":"trusted"
  }
}