Hi @mitangelo,
The CONSUL_HTTP_AUTH environment variable is only needed when you have a reverse proxy in front of Consul’s HTTP API that requires Basic Authentication. In such a configuration, you would need to provide the following credentials in order to login to Consul.
# Authentication credentials required by reverse proxy
export CONSUL_HTTP_AUTH="username:password"
# Authentication token required by Consul
export CONSUL_HTTP_TOKEN=<token>
$ consul catalog services
<service list>
The consul login command is used for authenticating to Consul via a supported auth method. Consul will validate the provided authentication credential, and if valid, exchange it for a Consul token with the appropriate permissions for the matching binding rule.
See the following post for a more detailed explanation of how the Kubernetes auth method works in Consul. The other auth methods follow a similar login flow.