There are multiple alternatives to authenticate the openstack command-line clients. The default way is to use your NTNU username and password, which is what is done if you base your auth on the openrc-file from horizon (the openstack web-interface). There are however a couple of alternatives. First, if you would like to avoid having your NTNU password in an environment variable in your shell, you could issue a token to use instead. A common use-case is to automate procedures by using scripts. These scripts needs to authenticate, and it is not good practice to store your NTNU-password such that the scripts can use them. In this case the recommended authentication-alternative is to use application-credentials, which lets your scripts authenticate using a secret separate from your password.