According to the documentation, one creates an admin token with influxdb3 create token --admin. The token is generated by InfluxDB and printed by the command.

It is not possible to provision a token generated by the user. This is quite annoying even in the simplest Docker Compose setup (e.g. in a development stack): we need to be able to configure a token that is known in advance and will be used for INFLUXDB3_AUTH_TOKEN and for other software expected to connect to InfluxDB.

InfluxDB 2 supported DOCKER_INFLUXDB_INIT_MODE with options to configure initial tokens (DOCKER_INFLUXDB_INIT_ADMIN_TOKEN, DOCKER_INFLUXDB_INIT_USERNAME, DOCKER_INFLUXDB_INIT_PASSWORD…). InfluxDB 3 does not seem to support any of it.

This also create a chicken-and-egg problem with automated setups: one must be able to generate a token independently from InfluxDB and provision it automatically.

The right solution is to allow influxdb3 create token --admin <my-token> (and not just for admin tokens of course).