Supernova is a command-line Linux tool for managing multiple OpenStack Nova environments.

Disclaimer

Supernova is quite long-in-the-tooth at this point. In fact, the future of the supernova project is the subject of some debate; however, there has not been much discussion recently.

As of writing this, the last comment on the open issue is from August 23, 2016.

That being said, chances are you have stumbled upon this post because you still manage an OpenStack-based environment (e.g. Rackspace Public Cloud) and find yourself continuing to rely on this crafty tool, but may be having difficulties acheiving a clean and functioning installation.

Installing Supernova

Dependencies

Assuming you have a fresh install of Debian 8.7:

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$ sudo apt-get install python-virtualenv python-pip python-dev libffi-dev libssl-dev;

Create

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# Use unprivileged, non-root user preferably
$ virtualenv supernova;
$ cd supernova/;
$ source bin/activate;

Install

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$ pip install appdirs;
$ pip install supernova rackspace-novaclient;
$ pip uninstall python-novaclient;
$ pip uninstall keystoneauth1;
$ pip install python-novaclient==6.0.0;
$ pip install keystoneauth1==2.18.0;
$ pip install keyrings.alt;

As you can see, I’ve purposefully targeted installations of specific, older versions of the python-novaclient and keystoneauth1 to account for eccentricities in interacting with the Rackspace Public Cloud environment.

Run

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$ supernova help;

At this point, you should proceed with configuring supernova and setting up your keyring (beyond the scope of this article).

Did You Know?

The OpenStackClient is a command-line client for OpenStack with the goal of consolidating the command set for various infrastructure services (Compute, Storage, etc.).

Check it out and let me know what you think of it!