To access a novnc console in OpenStack without logging into the Horizon WebUi, follow the steps below.

First and foremost you need to find your virtual instance. In this example I am looking for one of my test instances.

# nova list | grep test

Note that if you are logged in as root and the instance you are looking for was created under a guest tenant, then the command is a bit different. See below.

# nova list –all-tenants | grep test

The nova list command above can spew out a lot of information if you have many test instances. However this is the one that I am looking for specifically.

2a5481e6-9210-4353-af8f-db49e052d5c6 | fatmin-test-1         | ACTIVE  | –          | Running     | fatmin_network=10.0.10.1

Now grab the UUID from the first field above.

# nova get-vnc-console 2a5481e6-9210-4353-af8f-db49e052d5c6 novnc

This will spit out a URL as shown below.

+——-+———————————————————————————–+
| Type | Url |
+——-+———————————————————————————–+
| novnc | http://10.21.148.95:6080/vnc_auto.html?token=f27af916-94a0-4a96-85fd-7b74b0748ce1 |
+——-+———————————————————————————–+

Now copy and paste this into a browser window to access the console for your instance.