Summary

A solution to the Influx DB CLI error “Failed to check token: received status code 401 from server” including instructions to install the InfluxDB V2 CLI.

Story

As I worked my way through using the Influx Database I tried using the InfluxDB CLI.  However, no matter what I seemed to do I got this error, which was super annoying.

linux$ 
linux$ influx
Failed to check token: received status code 401 from server
linux$ influx create
Failed to check token: received status code 401 from server
linux$ influx adsf
Failed to check token: received status code 401 from server
linux$ influx setup
Failed to check token: received status code 401 from server

I tried googling around to try to figure out what was happening but really didn’t see anything that would explain that behavior.  However, I did find one comment that if you were using Docker you could run the CLI by running in the shell.  So I tried that:

linux$ docker exec -it 89ffd4bb9ec5  /bin/bash
root@89ffd4bb9ec5:/# influx version
Influx CLI 2.0.4 (git: 4e7a59bb9a) build_date: 2021-02-08T17:47:02Z

When I originally installed the client (on Ubuntu) I did this:

linux$ sudo apt install influxdb-client
[sudo] password for arh: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
  linux-hwe-5.4-headers-5.4.0-71
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  influxdb-client
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 97 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,146 kB of archives.
After this operation, 3,969 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/universe amd64 influxdb-client amd64 1.1.1+dfsg1-4 [1,146 kB]
Fetched 1,146 kB in 1s (1,883 kB/s)       
Selecting previously unselected package influxdb-client.
(Reading database ... 275845 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../influxdb-client_1.1.1+dfsg1-4_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking influxdb-client (1.1.1+dfsg1-4) ...
Setting up influxdb-client (1.1.1+dfsg1-4) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.8.3-2ubuntu0.1) ...

When I ran the version look what I got:

linux$ /usr/bin/influx -version
InfluxDB shell version: 1.1.1

Now we know the problem.  I have the wrong version of the CLI.  This was caused by two things

1. I installed the docker version of InfluxDB.  So I never had the command line version on my linux box.
2. The influxdb-client that you get from whatever the debian source on Ubuntu is the 1.xx version.  It is too bad that you can’t “sudo apt install influxdbv2-client”  Oh well.

To fix this start by nuking the old version.

linux$ sudo apt-get remove influxdb-client
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
  linux-hwe-5.4-headers-5.4.0-71
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  influxdb-client
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 97 not upgraded.
After this operation, 3,969 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 275851 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing influxdb-client (1.1.1+dfsg1-4) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.8.3-2ubuntu0.1) ...

Then download the “InfluxDB Cloud CLI” (which is just a standalone version of the CLI.  You can get it from the influxdata.com website here.

Scroll down to the InfluxDB Cloud CLI

Then follow the instructions (Notice that I moved it to /usr/local/bin)

linux$ wget https://dl.influxdata.com/influxdb/releases/influxdb2-client-2.0.6-linux-amd64.tar.gz
--2021-05-21 11:08:48--  https://dl.influxdata.com/influxdb/releases/influxdb2-client-2.0.6-linux-amd64.tar.gz
Resolving dl.influxdata.com (dl.influxdata.com)... 13.33.74.100, 13.33.74.21, 13.33.74.27, ...
Connecting to dl.influxdata.com (dl.influxdata.com)|13.33.74.100|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 11758006 (11M) [application/x-gzip]
Saving to: ‘influxdb2-client-2.0.6-linux-amd64.tar.gz’

influxdb2-client-2.0.6-linux-amd64.tar.gz              100%[===========================================================================================================================>]  11.21M  10.8MB/s    in 1.0s    

2021-05-21 11:08:50 (10.8 MB/s) - ‘influxdb2-client-2.0.6-linux-amd64.tar.gz’ saved [11758006/11758006]

linux$ tar xvf influxdb2-client-2.0.6-linux-amd64.tar.gz 
influxdb2-client-2.0.6-linux-amd64/LICENSE
influxdb2-client-2.0.6-linux-amd64/README.md
influxdb2-client-2.0.6-linux-amd64/influx
linux$ sudo mv influxdb2-client-2.0.6-linux-amd64/influx /usr/local/bin

Now when you check the version, you are in the money

linux$ influx version
Influx CLI 2.0.6 (git: 4db98b4c9a) build_date: 2021-04-29T16:48:12Z