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Console Sources

Kerbside can connect to the following platforms:

The connection to each platform (a source of consoles, so "console sources") is defined in the sources.yaml configuration file in YAML format. The path to this file is configured via the SOURCES_PATH setting.

How Console Sources Work

Kerbside handles different source types in different ways:

  • Shaken Fist and oVirt: These sources are queried regularly (once a minute) for a list of available consoles. The consoles are stored in the database and presented in the Kerbside administrative interface.

  • OpenStack: OpenStack sources are handled differently. Rather than periodic scraping, OpenStack uses on-demand authentication. When a user requests a console via Nova's SPICE console API, Nova provides an authentication token that Kerbside validates against the configured OpenStack source. This means OpenStack consoles appear dynamically when requested rather than being pre-discovered.

It is possible to have more than one console source for a given type, so for example the VDI proxy could be used to combine virtual machines from two OpenStack clusters together seamlessly.

Shaken Fist

The following options are used to configure a Shaken Fist console source (type: shakenfist).

Option Description
source The name of the source (used as an identifier)
type The type of the source: shakenfist
url The API URL for the Shaken Fist cluster
username The Shaken Fist namespace to authenticate to
password The API key/password to authenticate with
ca_cert Required: the SSL CA public key certificate to validate API and VDI connections against

Note: The CA certificate is verified against the cluster's advertised certificate during initialization. If they don't match, the source will be marked as errored.

oVirt

The following options are used to configure an oVirt console source (type: ovirt).

Option Description
source The name of the source (used as an identifier)
type The type of the source: ovirt
url The oVirt Engine URL (e.g., https://ovirt.example.org/ovirt-engine)
username The username to authenticate to the source as (e.g., admin@internal)
password The password to authenticate with
ca_cert Required: the SSL CA public key certificate to validate API and VDI connections against

Note: The CA certificate is verified against the engine's PKI certificate during initialization. If they don't match, the source will be marked as errored.

OpenStack

OpenStack sources work differently from Shaken Fist and oVirt. Instead of periodically scraping for available consoles, Kerbside validates authentication tokens issued by Nova when users request SPICE direct console access.

Nova 2025.1 (Epoxy) and later includes native support for SPICE direct consoles via the "spice-direct" console type. When a user requests a console, Nova returns a URL pointing to Kerbside with an authentication token. Kerbside validates this token via Nova's /os-console-auth-tokens/ API and establishes the proxied connection to the hypervisor.

The following options are used to configure an OpenStack console source (type: openstack).

Option Description
source The name of the source (used as an identifier)
type The type of the source: openstack
url The Keystone authentication URL (e.g., http://keystone.example.org:5000)
username The username for the service account
password The password for the service account
project_name The OpenStack project name for the service account
user_domain_id The OpenStack user domain ID (typically "default")
project_domain_id The OpenStack project domain ID (typically "default")
ca_cert Optional: the SSL CA public key certificate to validate connections against

Note: OpenStack integration requires Nova 2025.1+ with SPICE direct console support enabled. See the Kerbside Patches repository for Kolla-Ansible deployment support, and the Nova specification for configuration details.

Example sources.yaml

An example configuration follows:

- source: sfmel
  type: shakenfist
  url: https://sfmel.example.org/api
  username: sfvdi
  password: ...omitted...
  ca_cert: |
    -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
    ...
    -----END CERTIFICATE-----

- source: ovirt
  type: ovirt
  url: https://ovirt.example.org/ovirt-engine
  username: kerbside@internal
  password: ...omitted...
  ca_cert: |
    -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
    ...
    -----END CERTIFICATE-----

- source: kolla
  type: openstack
  url: http://keystone.example.org:5000
  username: kerbside
  password: ...omitted...
  project_name: service
  user_domain_id: default
  project_domain_id: default