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 Update

Command: consul acl policy update

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

The acl policy update command is used to update a policy. The default operations is to merge the current policy with those values provided to the command invocation. Therefore to update just one field, only the -id or -name options and the option to modify must be provided. Note that renaming policies requires both the -id and -name as the new name cannot yet be used to lookup the policy.

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 update [options] [args]

Command Options

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

  • -id=<string> - The ID of the policy to update. It may be specified as a unique ID prefix but will error if the prefix matches multiple policy IDs

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

  • -name=<string> - The policy's name.

  • -no-merge - Do not merge the current policy information with what is provided to the command. Instead overwrite all fields with the exception of the policy ID which is immutable.

  • -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.

Specifying -rules will overwrite existing rules.

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

Update a policy:

$ consul acl policy update -id 35b8 -name "replication" -description "Policy capable of replication ACL policies and Intentions" -rules @rules.hcl
Policy updated successfully
ID:           35b8ecb0-707c-ee18-2002-81b238b54b38
Name:         replication
Description:  Policy capable of replication ACL policies and Intentions
Datacenters:
Rules:
acl = "read"

service_prefix "" {
   policy = "read"
   intentions = "read"
}

Rename a policy:

$ consul acl policy update -id 35b8 -name "dc1-replication"
Policy updated successfully
ID:           35b8ecb0-707c-ee18-2002-81b238b54b38
Name:         dc1-replication
Description:  Policy capable of replication ACL policies and Intentions
Datacenters:  dc1
Rules:
acl = "read"

service_prefix "" {
   policy = "read"
   intentions = "read"
}
Edit this page on GitHub