What is Azure Service Principal

Question

My requirement is simple. I want to login to Azure through my shell script in non-interactive mode, but "az login -u username -p password" command gives the following error:

Get Token request returned http error: 400 and server response: {"error":"invalid_grant","error_description":"AADSTS70002: Error validating credentials. : SAML token is invalid. : The element with ID 'xxxxxx' was either unsigned or the signature was invalid.

Some site told me to create a service principal. Now my question is, what is a service principal, and how do I create a service principal so that I can execute my commands (for creating different resources like app gateway) from my shell script?

Answer 1

An Azure service principal is an identity that may be used to access Azure resources through apps, hosted services, and automated tools. The responsibilities granted to the service principal restrict this access, providing you control over which resources may be accessed and at what degree.