Consul Commands (CLI)

Consul is controlled via a very easy to use command-line interface (CLI). Consul is only a single command-line application: consul. This application then takes a subcommand such as "agent" or "members". The complete list of subcommands is in the navigation to the left.

The consul CLI is a well-behaved command line application. In erroneous cases, a non-zero exit status will be returned. It also responds to -h and --help as you'd most likely expect. And some commands that expect input accept "-" as a parameter to tell Consul to read the input from stdin.

To view a list of the available commands at any time, just run consul with no arguments:

$ consul
Usage: consul [--version] [--help] <command> [<args>]

Available commands are:
    acl            Interact with Consul's ACLs
    agent          Runs a Consul agent
    catalog        Interact with the catalog
    connect        Interact with service mesh functionality
    debug          Records a debugging archive for operators
    event          Fire a new event
    exec           Executes a command on Consul nodes
    force-leave    Forces a member of the cluster to enter the "left" state
    info           Provides debugging information for operators.
    intention      Interact with service mesh intentions
    join           Tell Consul agent to join cluster
    keygen         Generates a new encryption key
    keyring        Manages gossip layer encryption keys
    kv             Interact with the key-value store
    leave          Gracefully leaves the Consul cluster and shuts down
    lock           Execute a command holding a lock
    login          Login to Consul using an auth method
    logout         Destroy a Consul token created with login
    maint          Controls node or service maintenance mode
    members        Lists the members of a Consul cluster
    monitor        Stream logs from a Consul agent
    operator       Provides cluster-level tools for Consul operators
    peering        Create and manage peering connections between Consul clusters
    reload         Triggers the agent to reload configuration files
    rtt            Estimates network round trip time between nodes
    services       Interact with services
    snapshot       Saves, restores and inspects snapshots of Consul server state
    tls            Builtin helpers for creating CAs and certificates
    troubleshoot   Provides tools to troubleshoot Consul's service mesh configuration
    validate       Validate config files/directories
    version        Prints the Consul version
    watch          Watch for changes in Consul

To get help for any specific command, pass the -h flag to the relevant subcommand. For example, to see help about the join subcommand:

$ consul join --help
Usage: consul join [options] address ...

  Tells a running Consul agent (with "consul agent") to join the cluster
  by specifying at least one existing member.

HTTP API Options

  -http-addr=<address>
     The `address` and port of the Consul HTTP agent. The value can be
     an IP address or DNS address, but it must also include the port.
     This can also be specified via the CONSUL_HTTP_ADDR environment
     variable. The default value is http://127.0.0.1:8500. The scheme
     can also be set to HTTPS by setting the environment variable
     CONSUL_HTTP_SSL=true.

  -token=<value>
     ACL token to use in the request. This can also be specified via the
     CONSUL_HTTP_TOKEN environment variable. If unspecified, the query
     will default to the token of the Consul agent at the HTTP address.

Command Options

  -wan
     Joins a server to another server in the WAN pool.

Authentication

When the ACL system is enabled the Consul CLI will require an ACL token to perform API requests.

The ACL token can be provided directly on the command line using the -token command line flag, from a file using the -token-file command line flag, or from the CONSUL_HTTP_TOKEN environment variable.

Autocompletion

The consul command features opt-in subcommand autocompletion that you can enable for your shell with consul -autocomplete-install. After doing so, you can invoke a new shell and use the feature.

For example, assume a tab is typed at the end of each prompt line:

$ consul e
event  exec

$ consul r
reload  rtt

$ consul operator raft
list-peers   remove-peer

Arguments with URL-Invalid Characters

The CLI automatically URL-encodes arguments, which are then URL-decoded by the underlying HTTP API endpoints. To avoid double-encoding arguments, do not URL-encode arguments passed to the CLI.

Environment Variables

In addition to CLI flags, Consul reads environment variables for behavior defaults. CLI flags always take precedence over environment variables, but it is often helpful to use environment variables to configure the Consul agent, particularly with configuration management and init systems.

These environment variables and their purpose are described below:

CONSUL_HTTP_ADDR

This is the HTTP API address to the local Consul agent (not the remote server) specified as a URI with optional scheme:

CONSUL_HTTP_ADDR=127.0.0.1:8500

or as a Unix socket path:

CONSUL_HTTP_ADDR=unix:///var/run/consul_http.sock

If the https:// scheme is used, CONSUL_HTTP_SSL is implied to be true.

CONSUL_HTTP_TOKEN

This is the API access token required when access control lists (ACLs) are enabled, for example:

CONSUL_HTTP_TOKEN=aba7cbe5-879b-999a-07cc-2efd9ac0ffe

CONSUL_HTTP_TOKEN_FILE

This is a path to a file containing the API access token required when access control lists (ACLs) are enabled, for example:

CONSUL_HTTP_TOKEN_FILE=/path/to/consul.token

CONSUL_HTTP_AUTH

This specifies HTTP Basic access credentials as a username:password pair:

CONSUL_HTTP_AUTH=operations:JPIMCmhDHzTukgO6

CONSUL_HTTP_SSL

This is a boolean value (default is false) that enables the HTTPS URI scheme and SSL connections to the HTTP API:

CONSUL_HTTP_SSL=true

CONSUL_HTTP_SSL_VERIFY

This is a boolean value (default true) to specify SSL certificate verification; setting this value to false is not recommended for production use. Example for development purposes:

CONSUL_HTTP_SSL_VERIFY=false

CONSUL_CACERT

Path to a CA file to use for TLS when communicating with Consul.

CONSUL_CACERT=ca.crt

CONSUL_CAPATH

Path to a directory of CA certificates to use for TLS when communicating with Consul.

CONSUL_CAPATH=ca_certs/

CONSUL_CLIENT_CERT

Path to a client cert file to use for TLS when verify_incoming is enabled.

CONSUL_CLIENT_CERT=client.crt

CONSUL_CLIENT_KEY

Path to a client key file to use for TLS when verify_incoming is enabled.

CONSUL_CLIENT_KEY=client.key

CONSUL_TLS_SERVER_NAME

The server name to use as the SNI host when connecting via TLS.

CONSUL_TLS_SERVER_NAME=consulserver.domain

CONSUL_GRPC_ADDR

Like CONSUL_HTTP_ADDR but configures the address the local agent is listening for gRPC requests. Currently gRPC is only used for integrating Envoy proxy and must be enabled explicitly in agent configuration.

CONSUL_GRPC_ADDR=127.0.0.1:8502

or as a Unix socket path:

CONSUL_GRPC_ADDR=unix://var/run/consul_grpc.sock

If the agent is configured with TLS certificates, then the gRPC listener will require TLS and present the same certificate as the https listener. As with CONSUL_HTTP_ADDR, if TLS is enabled either the https:// scheme should be used, or CONSUL_HTTP_SSL set.

CONSUL_NAMESPACE

Enterprise only If you're using Consul Enterprise namespaces you can set this for the CLI to explicitly use a single namespace. This is common across all Hashicorp products that support Enterprise namespaces.

CONSUL_NAMESPACE=default