Getting Started with the CLI
We have a lovely browser-based GUI for managing your Brightbox resources, but sometimes the power of a command line interface is required.
You can interact with Brightbox using our our command line interface tool, which uses our API. This guide will take you from creating a Brightbox Account to logging into your first Cloud Server via SSH.
Create an Account and OAuth Application
Firstly, sign up for a Brightbox Account.
Install the CLI
Now that you have an account, you’ll need to install our CLI software. Go do that and come back here. I’ll wait for you.
Login with the CLI
Now you have the CLI installed, use it to login with your email and password:
$ brightbox login john@example.com
Enter your password :
The default account of acc-12345 has been selectedNotice that your account has automatically been selected as the default. If you
only have one account then don’t worry. However, if you have multiple accounts
or are a collaborator on another user’s
account, you might want to select a specific account as your default using using
the --default-account option to the login command.
Initial test
You should now be able to retrieve details of your user. Note your id as you’ll need it in a moment to set an SSH key:
$ brightbox users list
id name email_address accounts
-------------------------------------------------------
usr-xxxxx John Doe john@example.com 1
-------------------------------------------------------Configuring your SSH key
If you didn’t provide your public SSH key when you signed up, you need to do that now so that you can log into newly created servers.
$ brightbox users update -f /home/john/.ssh/id_rsa.pub usr-xxxxx
id: usr-xxxxx
name: John Doe
email_address: john@example.com
accounts: acc-12345
ssh_key: ssh-dss AAAAB3....Building your first server
Choose an image
First, let’s choose an operating system Image to use:
$ brightbox images
id owner type created_on status size name
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
img-hy0lf brightbox official 2013-05-10 public 0 Blank Disk Image (i686)
img-t3xyp brightbox official 2013-05-10 public 0 Blank Disk Image (x86_64)
img-adtke brightbox official 2011-07-20 public 0 Blank Disk Image (compat) (i686)
img-ztdma brightbox official 2011-07-20 public 0 Blank Disk Image (compat) (x86_64)
img-8uks9 brightbox official 2020-04-29 public 2 Brightbox Bootstaller (x86_64)
img-6lzq5 brightbox official 2019-08-10 public 8192 CentOS-6-x86_64-server (x86_64)
img-mridq brightbox official 2020-04-28 public 8192 CentOS-7-x86_64-server (x86_64)
img-5p8nt brightbox official 2021-06-09 public 10240 CentOS-8-x86_64-server (x86_64)
img-w1c9b brightbox official 2020-10-29 public 4096 Fedora-33-x86_64-server (x86_64)
img-lqlqq brightbox official 2021-04-28 public 5120 Fedora-34-x86_64-server (x86_64)
img-l60i2 brightbox official 2021-06-09 public 5121 FreeBSD-11-amd64-server (x86_64)
img-mrzzf brightbox official 2021-06-09 public 5121 FreeBSD-11-i386-server (i686)
img-g8byj brightbox official 2021-06-09 public 5121 FreeBSD-12-amd64-server (x86_64)
img-axudr brightbox official 2021-06-09 public 5121 FreeBSD-12-i386-server (i686)
img-ikdu0 brightbox official 2021-04-13 public 5153 FreeBSD-13-amd64-server (x86_64)
img-i7rn5 brightbox official 2021-04-13 public 5153 FreeBSD-13-i386-server (i686)
img-jojo6 brightbox official 2017-08-02 public 20480 Windows 2008 Server R2 (x86_64)
img-hj5x9 brightbox official 2021-08-17 public 20480 Windows Server 2019 Standard (x86_64)
img-hphf5 brightbox official 2021-08-28 public 2048 debian-10-amd64-server (x86_64)
img-ipy3j brightbox official 2021-07-23 public 2048 debian-9-amd64-server (x86_64)
img-ciz3j brightbox official 2021-05-06 public 10240 fedora-coreos-33-x86_64-server (x86_64)
img-nj52f brightbox official 2021-08-11 public 10240 fedora-coreos-34-x86_64-server (x86_64)
img-w5ge5 brightbox official 2021-09-01 public 2252 ubuntu-bionic-18.04-amd64-server (x86_64)
img-r7ja0 brightbox official 2021-09-01 public 2252 ubuntu-bionic-18.04-i386-server (i686)
img-s9k5c brightbox official 2021-08-27 public 2252 ubuntu-focal-20.04-amd64-server (x86_64)
img-axhjp brightbox official 2021-08-18 public 2252 ubuntu-hirsute-21.04-amd64-server (x86_64)
img-jtxtg brightbox official 2021-04-30 public 2252 ubuntu-xenial-16.04-amd64-server (x86_64)
img-62z37 brightbox official 2021-04-30 public 2252 ubuntu-xenial-16.04-amd64-server-uefi1 (x86_64)
img-2qqwz brightbox official 2021-04-30 public 2252 ubuntu-xenial-16.04-i386-server (i686)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Let’s use ubuntu-focal-20.04-amd64-server, which is has an
identifier of img-s9k5c. We can inspect the details of the image
using brightbox images show. The username field shows that the
default account is named ubuntu.
$ brightbox images show img-s9k5c
id: img-s9k5c
type: official
owner: brightbox
created_at: 2021-08-27T06:57Z
status: public
locked: false
arch: x86_64
name: ubuntu-focal-20.04-amd64-server (x86_64)
description: ID: com.ubuntu.cloud:released:download/com.ubuntu.cloud:server:20.04:amd64/20210825/...
username: ubuntu
virtual_size: 2252
disk_size: 649
public: true
compatibility_mode: false
official: true
ancestor_id:
licence_name:Create the server
Now you can create a server using that image. Give it a name of my
first server so you can identify it easily later:
$ brightbox servers create -n "my first server" img-s9k5c
Creating a 1gb.ssd (typ-w0hf9) server with image ubuntu-focal-20.04-amd64-server (img-s9k5c)
id status type zone created_on image_id cloud_ips name
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
srv-zx1hd creating 1gb.ssd gb1-b 2021-08-29 img-s9k5c my first server
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Note that the new server has been given the identifier srv-zx1hd.
If you wait a few moments and show the details of the new server, it
should have changed status from creating to active, which means
it has been built and has started up:
$ brightbox servers show srv-zx1hd
id: srv-zx1hd
status: active
locked: false
name: my first server
created_at: 2021-08-29T00:24
deleted_at:
zone: gb1-a
type: typ-w0hf9
type_name: SSD 1GB
type_handle: 1gb.ssd
ram: 1024
cores: 1
disk: 30720
image: img-s9k5c
image_name: ubuntu-focal-20.04-amd64-server
private_ips: 10.146.19.166
cloud_ips:
ipv6_address: 2a02:1348:14c:4f3:24:19ff:fef0:13ce
cloud_ip_ids:
hostname: srv-zk1hd
fqdn: srv-zk1hd.gb1.brightbox.com
public_hostname:
ipv6_hostname: ipv6.srv-zk1hd.gb1.brightbox.com
snapshots:
server_groups: grp-98v4nMapping a Cloud IP
So now you have a server with a IPv6 address and a private IPv4 address. You can reach it straight away if you have an IPv6 Internet connection:
$ ping6 ipv6.srv-zx1hd.gb1.brightbox.com
PING ipv6.srv-zx1hd.gb1.brightbox.com(2a02:1348:14c:4f3:24:19ff:fef0:13ce) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2a02:1348:14c:4f3:24:19ff:fef0:13ce: icmp_seq=1 ttl=54 time=13.8 ms
--- ipv6.srv-qdhro.gb1.brightbox.com ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 13.876/13.876/13.876/0.000 msTo give it a public IPv4 address, you need to map a Cloud IP to it. Firstly, create a Cloud IP on your account:
$ brightbox cloudips create
id status public_ip destination reverse_dns name
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
cip-360ea unmapped 109.107.37.80 cip-109-107-37-80.gb1.brightbox.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Then map it to your server using the Cloud IP identifier and your server identifier:
$ brightbox cloudips map cip-360ea srv-zx1hd
Mapping cip-360ea to interface int-x4kve on srv-zx1hd
id status public_ip destination reverse_dns name
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
cip-360ea mapped 109.107.37.80 srv-zx1hd cip-109-107-37-80.gb1.brightbox.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Now you can log in via SSH using your ssh key. Remember, this image uses the
ubuntu account by default:
$ ssh ubuntu@109.107.37.80
Welcome to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (GNU/Linux)
ubuntu@srv-zx1hd:~$ uptime
13:02:07 up 0:01, 1 user, load average: 0.04, 0.01, 0.00For convenience, there is also a DNS entry for the first Cloud IP mapped to a server:
$ host public.srv-zx1hd.gb1.brightbox.com
public.srv-zx1hd.gb1.brightbox.com has address 109.107.37.80Would you like to know more?
Here you installed and configured the Command Line Interface tool, created an Ubuntu server, mapped a Cloud IP to it and connected in using ssh.
You might want to learn more about Cloud IPs, discover zones or learn how to Create a snapshot.
You’ll also need to know about server types so
you can build servers with different specs. See the brightbox types command
for a list.
You might also want to learn a bit about the default firewall policy, and how to change it.
If you want to automate use of the CLI you may want to look into authenticating with an API client, rather than your user credentials.