Providing credentials for authentication

Authentication works with any combination of internal Cassandra password authentication, LDAP pass-through authentication, and Kerberos authentication.

Authentication works with any combination of internal Cassandra password authentication, LDAP pass-through authentication, and Kerberos authentication.

Authentication is supported for use with dse commands and the dsetool utility.

Providing credentials 

You can provide the credentials in several ways:
Command line
Provide login credentials on the command line: 
$ dse [-u username -p password] [-f config_file] [-a jmx_username -b jmx_password] subcommand
dsetool dsetool [-l username -p password] [-f config_file] [-a jmx_username -b jmx_password] subcommand
where:
  • -f config_file is the path to a configuration file that stores credentials. If not specified, then use ~/.dserc if it exists.
    The configuration file can contain Cassandra and JMX login credentials. For example:
    username=cassandra
password=cassandra
jmx_username=cassandra
jmx_password=jmx
    The credentials in the configuration file are stored in clear text. DataStax recommends restricting access to this file only to the specific user.
  • --ssl enables SSL encryption.
  • dse -u username is the user name to authenticate against the configured Cassandra user.
  • dsetool -l username is the user name to authenticate against the configured Cassandra user.
  • -p password is the password to authenticate against the configured Cassandra user. If you do not provide a password on the command line, you are prompted to enter one.
  • -a jmx_username is the user name for authenticating with secure JMX.
  • -b jmx_username is the password for authenticating with secure JMX. If you do not provide a password on the command line, you are prompted to enter one.
~/.dserc file
Create a file named .dserc in your home directory. The ~/.dserc file contains the Cassandra user name and password:
username=username
password=password

When you launch a password-protected tool and authentication is not provided on the command line, the credentials in the ~/.dserc file are used. The ~/.dserc is ignored when a configuration file is specified with -f.