HashiTalks 2025 Learn about unique use cases, homelab setups, and best practices at scale at our 24-hour virtual knowledge sharing event. Register
Consul
Consul Home

Consul ACL Policy Create

Command: consul acl policy create

Corresponding HTTP API Endpoint: [PUT] /v1/acl/policy

The acl policy create command creates new policies.

The -rules parameter value allow loading the value from stdin, a file or the raw value. To use stdin pass - as the value. To load the value from a file prefix the value with an @. Any other values will be used directly.

The table below shows this command's required ACLs. Configuration of blocking queries and agent caching are not supported from commands, but may be from the corresponding HTTP endpoint.

ACL Required
acl:write

Usage

Usage: consul acl policy create [options] [args]

Command Options

  • -description=<string> - A description of the policy.

  • -meta - Indicates that policy metadata such as the content hash and raft indices should be shown for each entry.

  • -name=<string> - The new policy's name. This flag is required.

  • -rules=<string> - The policy rules. May be prefixed with '@' to indicate that the value is a file path to load the rules from. '-' may also be given to indicate that the rules are available on stdin.

  • -valid-datacenter=<value> - Datacenter that the policy should be valid within. This flag may be specified multiple times.

  • -format={pretty|json} - Command output format. The default value is pretty.

Enterprise Options

  • -partition=<string> - Enterprise Specifies the admin partition to query. If not provided, the partition is inferred from the request's ACL token, or defaults to the default partition.
  • -namespace=<string> - Specifies the namespace to query. If not provided, the namespace will be inferred from the request's ACL token, or will default to the default namespace. Namespaces are a Consul Enterprise feature added in v1.7.0.

API Options

  • -ca-file=<value> - Path to a CA file to use for TLS when communicating with Consul. This can also be specified via the CONSUL_CACERT environment variable.

  • -ca-path=<value> - Path to a directory of CA certificates to use for TLS when communicating with Consul. This can also be specified via the CONSUL_CAPATH environment variable.

  • -client-cert=<value> - Path to a client cert file to use for TLS when verify_incoming is enabled. This can also be specified via the CONSUL_CLIENT_CERT environment variable.

  • -client-key=<value> - Path to a client key file to use for TLS when verify_incoming is enabled. This can also be specified via the CONSUL_CLIENT_KEY environment variable.

  • -http-addr=<addr> - Address of the Consul agent with the port. This can be an IP address or DNS address, but it must include the port. This can also be specified via the CONSUL_HTTP_ADDR environment variable. In Consul 0.8 and later, the default value is http://127.0.0.1:8500, and https can optionally be used instead. The scheme can also be set to HTTPS by setting the environment variable CONSUL_HTTP_SSL=true. This may be a unix domain socket using unix:///path/to/socket if the agent is configured to listen that way.

  • -tls-server-name=<value> - The server name to use as the SNI host when connecting via TLS. This can also be specified via the CONSUL_TLS_SERVER_NAME environment variable.

  • -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.

  • -token-file=<value> - File containing the ACL token to use in the request instead of one specified via the -token argument or CONSUL_HTTP_TOKEN environment variable. This can also be specified via the CONSUL_HTTP_TOKEN_FILE environment variable.

  • -datacenter=<name> - Name of the datacenter to query. If unspecified, the query will default to the datacenter of the Consul agent at the HTTP address.

  • -stale - Permit any Consul server (non-leader) to respond to this request. This allows for lower latency and higher throughput, but can result in stale data. This option has no effect on non-read operations. The default value is false.

Examples

Create a new policy that is valid in all datacenters:

$ consul acl policy create -name "acl-replication" -description "Policy capable of replicating ACL policies" -rules 'acl = "read"'
ID:           35b8ecb0-707c-ee18-2002-81b238b54b38
Name:         acl-replication
Description:  Policy capable of replicating ACL policies
Datacenters:
Rules:
acl = "read"

Create a new policy valid only in specific datacenters with rules read from a file:

$ consul acl policy create -name "replication" -description "Replication" -rules @rules.hcl -valid-datacenter dc1 -valid-datacenter dc2
ID:           ca44555b-a2d8-94de-d763-88caffdaf11f
Name:         replication
Description:  Replication
Datacenters:  dc1, dc2
Rules:
acl = "read"
service_prefix "" {
   policy = "read"
   intentions = "read"
}
Edit this page on GitHub