Using the BigAnimal CLI

Use the command line interface (CLI) for BigAnimal management activities such as cluster provisioning and getting cluster status from your terminal. The CLI is an efficient way to integrate with BigAnimal and enables system administrators and developers to script and automate the BigAnimal administrative operations.

Installing the CLI

The CLI is available for Linux, MacOS, and Windows operating systems.

Download the binary executable

• For Linux operating systems, use the following command to get the latest version of the binary executable:

  Toggle WrapCopy

  curl -LO "https://cli.biganimal.com/download/$(uname -s)/$(uname -m)/latest/biganimal"

• For all other operating systems, download the executable binary here. After downloading, move the binary executable under a directory on your executable search path.

(Optional) Validate the download

• For Linux users:

  1. Copy the SHA256 checksum code for Linux distribution from the BigAnimal CLI page and store it as a local file, such as biganimal_linux_amd64.sha256. Alternatively, click the SHA256 code to download it as a file directly and verify the content of the downloaded file is identical to the checksum code showed on the page.
  2. From your local shell, validate the binary executable file against the checksum file:

     Toggle WrapCopy

     echo "$(<biganimal_linux_amd64.sha256) biganimal" | sha256sum --check

• For Windows users:

  1. Download the SHA256 checksum code for Windows distribution from the BigAnimal CLI page and store it as a local file, such as biganimal_windows_amd64.sha256. Alternatively, click the SHA256 code to download it as a file directly and verify the content of the downloaded file is identical to the checksum code showed on the page.
  2. Validate the binary executable file against the checksum file using CertUtil:

     Toggle WrapCopy

     CertUtil -hashfile biganimal.exe SHA256 type biganiml_windows_amd64.sha256

• For MacOS users:

  1. Download the SHA256 checksum code for MacOS distribution from the BigAnimal CLI page and store it as a local file, such as biganimal_darwin_amd64.sha256. Alternatively, click the SHA256 code to download it as a file directly and verify the content of the downloaded file is identical to the checksum code showed on the page.
  2. From MacOS terminal, validate the binary executable file against the checksum file:

     Toggle WrapCopy

     echo "$(<biganimal_darwin_amd64.sha256)  biganimal" | shasum -a256 -c

Make the CLI command executable within Cloud Shell

Change the permissions of the CLI to make it executable in Cloud Shell:

chmod +x biganimal

Authenticate as a valid user

Before using the CLI to manage BigAnimal, you need to authenticate as a valid BigAnimal user. Use the create-credential command to authenticate through the BigAnimal website and assign a refresh token and an access token to a local credential. For example:

biganimal create-credential \
  --name "ba-user1" \
  --address "portal.biganimal.com" \
  --port "443"

Querying Authentication Endpoint for 'portal.biganimal.com'
First, copy your one-time code:
         CWWG-SMXC
Then visit: https://auth.biganimal.com/activate
press [Enter] to continue in the web browser...

Credential "ba-user1" created!

Refresh tokens expire after 30 days. To continue using the credential to access the CLI, use the reset-credential command to authenticate through the BigAnimal website and receive a new refresh token:

biganimal reset-credential ba-user1

Visit this URL to login: https://auth.biganimal.com/activate?user_code=****-****
or press [Enter] to continue in the web browser 

Credential "ba-user1" reset operation succeeded

You can create multiple credentials for different BigAnimal accounts and then set one as context of your current management session. Use show-credentials to list all available credentials, and use config set context_credential to set a default credential for the current context. For example:

biganimal show-credentials

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Credentials                                                             ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃ name     ┃ address                     ┃ port ┃  context credential     ┃
┃━━━━━━━━━━┃━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┃━━━━━━┃━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┃
┃ ba-user1 ┃ portal.biganimal.com        ┃ 443  ┃ x                       ┃
┃ ba-user2 ┃ portal.biganimal.com        ┃ 443  ┃                         ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
The credential ba-user1 has been set up

biganimal config set context_credential ba-user1

Configuring

The initial running of the CLI creates a hidden configuration folder in your user root directory. For example, for Linux it’s ${HOME}/.edb-cli. The CLI persists the configuration file in this directory as well as the credentials.

Don’t edit files in this directory directly. Instead, use the config subcommand to list and update the configuration settings of the CLI. Use the following command to get detailed usage and available configurations information:

biganimal config

Available configuration settings

Usability features

Online command reference and help

Use the -h or --help flags for more information on the CLI commands. You can use these flags on the biganimal command to get a listing of all the available subcommands (biganimal -h) or on a subcommand to get information on that particular command (for example, biganimal create-cluster -h).

Auto completion

You can enable command line auto completion for bash, fish, powershell, and zsh. To set up auto completion:

biganimal completion

Interactive mode

In interactive mode, the CLI prompts you for any missing mandatory flags and lists any available options for your current context. To enable interactive mode:

biganimal config set interactive_mode on

Sample use cases

See:

• Managing clusters with the CLI
• Accessing BigAnimal features with the CLI

• On this page
• Installing the CLI
• Authenticate as a valid user
• Configuring
• Usability features
• Sample use cases