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Overview

Private images can be shared with specific projects without making them globally public. This enables controlled cross-team image distribution — a platform team can maintain golden images and share them selectively with application teams. The target project must accept the share before the image becomes visible in their catalog.
Prerequisites
  • An active Polystack account with appropriate permissions
  • Access to the Polystack Dashboard or CLI configured with credentials
  • API credentials sourced (source openrc.sh)

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Image Visibility Options

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Share an Image

1

Set image visibility to Shared

The image must have Shared visibility before it can be shared with other projects. If the image is currently Private:
  • During creation: Select Shared in the Visibility radio and choose the target projects from the project table
  • After creation (admin only): Click Edit on the image row and check Public, or use the CLI to set visibility to shared
2

Manage Access (admin only)

In the admin view, navigate to Compute > Images (admin view). Click the More dropdown on the image row and select Manage Access.
The Manage Access action only appears when the image has Shared visibility. It is available to administrators only.
The dialog shows:Select one or more projects and click Confirm.
3

Verify in target project

Users in the target project can see the shared image under the Shared Images tab in Compute > Images.

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Accept a Shared Image (Target Project)

The target project administrator must accept the share before the image is usable.
Log in as a user in the target project. Navigate to Compute > Images. Find the shared image in the Shared Images tab. Shared images appear automatically — no explicit accept action is needed in the Dashboard.
To explicitly accept a shared image via CLI, run: openstack image set --accept <image-id>

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Reject or Remove a Share

Remove project from image members
The image immediately disappears from the target project’s catalog.

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Community Images

Community images are discoverable by all projects without explicit sharing, but are not pushed into every project’s default catalog. You must search for them explicitly.
Set image visibility to community
List community images
Community images are visible to all authenticated users but do not appear in the default image list unless searched. They are useful for widely-useful base images that any team can discover and use without platform team intervention.

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Next Steps

Image Properties

Add metadata to shared images to communicate hardware requirements and OS details.

Upload an Image

Upload new images to share with your organization.

Image Admin Guide — Quotas

Configure per-project image count and storage quotas.

Troubleshooting

Resolve shared image visibility and acceptance issues.