CLI First Use and Validation

This section describes how to configure the Alert Logic CLI to connect to Alert Logic using your credentials and validate the configuration.

Prerequisites for Configuration

You must have valid credentials to access Alert Logic APIs using the Alert Logic CLI. You can use either your Alert Logic username and password (and MFA credentials if required), or a dedicated access key and secret key. The Requirements documentation contains more information on credentials.

Validating alcli installation

To validate alcli is installed correctly and that a supported Python interpreter is available, execute:

alcli --version

Sample output:

$ alcli --version
alcli/1.0.28 Python/3.7.7 almdrlib/1.0.28 alsdkdefs/0.0.10

Add your credentials

Before you can run a CLI command, you must configure your credentials.

By default, alcli uses the .alertlogic/config configuration file in a user home directory. On Windows, it is found in your home path, usually C:\USERS\<your user name>. File can contain multiple profiles. Here is an example of a configuration file that has credentials for a single production login:

[default] 
access_key_id=2222222222222222 
secret_key=dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd 
global_endpoint=production 

You can also specify the location of the configuration file by setting ALERTLOGIC_CONFIG environment variable to contain file's location.

Credential validation

To validate your credentials, execute:

alcli --query authentication.user.email aims authenticate

Sample output:

$ alcli --query authentication.user.email aims authenticate
"user@example.com"

This command calls the authenticate endpoint of the AIMS service to obtain information about the credentials you supplied, The --query authentication.user.email option uses a JMESPath query to extract your email address from the full JSON response.

Troubleshooting

If you receive an “Access Denied” message when validating your credentials, verify that:

• The .alertlogic directory is present in your home directory, and contains a file named config, with no extension.
• If you are using a dedicated secret key and access key, check that the config file you created includes a valid secret key and access key. Secret keys are 16 characters long, and access keys are 64 characters long.
• If you are using your own username as a secret key, verify that the username includes your full email address.