You must use a kubectl version that is within one minor version difference of your cluster. For example, a v1.23 client can communicate with v1.22, v1.23, and v1.24 control planes. Using the latest compatible version of kubectl helps avoid unforeseen issues.
The following methods exist for installing kubectl on Linux:
Download the latest release with the command:
curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl"
To download a specific version, replace the $(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)
portion of the command with the specific version.
For example, to download version v1.23.0 on Linux, type:
curl -LO https://dl.k8s.io/release/v1.23.0/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl
Validate the binary (optional)
Download the kubectl checksum file:
curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl.sha256"
Validate the kubectl binary against the checksum file:
echo "$(<kubectl.sha256) kubectl" | sha256sum --check
If valid, the output is:
kubectl: OK
If the check fails, sha256
exits with nonzero status and prints output similar to:
kubectl: FAILED sha256sum: WARNING: 1 computed checksum did NOT match
Install kubectl
sudo install -o root -g root -m 0755 kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl
If you do not have root access on the target system, you can still install kubectl to the ~/.local/bin
directory:
chmod +x kubectl mkdir -p ~/.local/bin/kubectl mv ./kubectl ~/.local/bin/kubectl # and then add ~/.local/bin/kubectl to $PATH
Test to ensure the version you installed is up-to-date:
kubectl version --client
Update the apt
package index and install packages needed to use the Kubernetes apt
repository:
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl
Download the Google Cloud public signing key:
sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/kubernetes-archive-keyring.gpg https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg
Add the Kubernetes apt
repository:
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/kubernetes-archive-keyring.gpg] https://apt.kubernetes.io/ kubernetes-xenial main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kubernetes.list
Update apt
package index with the new repository and install kubectl:
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install -y kubectl
cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/kubernetes.repo [kubernetes] name=Kubernetes baseurl=https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/repos/kubernetes-el7-x86_64 enabled=1 gpgcheck=1 repo_gpgcheck=1 gpgkey=https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/doc/yum-key.gpg https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/doc/rpm-package-key.gpg EOF sudo yum install -y kubectl
If you are on Ubuntu or another Linux distribution that support snap package manager, kubectl is available as a snap application.
snap install kubectl --classic kubectl version --client
If you are on Linux and using Homebrew package manager, kubectl is available for installation.
brew install kubectl kubectl version --client
In order for kubectl to find and access a Kubernetes cluster, it needs a kubeconfig file, which is created automatically when you create a cluster using kube-up.sh or successfully deploy a Minikube cluster. By default, kubectl configuration is located at ~/.kube/config
.
Check that kubectl is properly configured by getting the cluster state:
kubectl cluster-info
If you see a URL response, kubectl is correctly configured to access your cluster.
If you see a message similar to the following, kubectl is not configured correctly or is not able to connect to a Kubernetes cluster.
The connection to the server <server-name:port> was refused - did you specify the right host or port?
For example, if you are intending to run a Kubernetes cluster on your laptop (locally), you will need a tool like Minikube to be installed first and then re-run the commands stated above.
If kubectl cluster-info returns the url response but you can't access your cluster, to check whether it is configured properly, use:
kubectl cluster-info dump
kubectl provides autocompletion support for Bash, Zsh, Fish, and PowerShell, which can save you a lot of typing.
Below are the procedures to set up autocompletion for Bash and Zsh.
The kubectl completion script for Bash can be generated with the command kubectl completion bash
. Sourcing the completion script in your shell enables kubectl autocompletion.
However, the completion script depends on bash-completion, which means that you have to install this software first (you can test if you have bash-completion already installed by running type _init_completion
).
bash-completion is provided by many package managers (see here). You can install it with apt-get install bash-completion
or yum install bash-completion
, etc.
The above commands create /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion
, which is the main script of bash-completion. Depending on your package manager, you have to manually source this file in your ~/.bashrc
file.
To find out, reload your shell and run type _init_completion
. If the command succeeds, you're already set, otherwise add the following to your ~/.bashrc
file:
source /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion
Reload your shell and verify that bash-completion is correctly installed by typing type _init_completion
.
You now need to ensure that the kubectl completion script gets sourced in all your shell sessions. There are two ways in which you can do this:
echo 'source <(kubectl completion bash)' >>~/.bashrc
kubectl completion bash | sudo tee /etc/bash_completion.d/kubectl > /dev/null
If you have an alias for kubectl, you can extend shell completion to work with that alias:
echo 'alias k=kubectl' >>~/.bashrc echo 'complete -F __start_kubectl k' >>~/.bashrc
/etc/bash_completion.d
. Both approaches are equivalent. After reloading your shell, kubectl autocompletion should be working.
The kubectl completion script for Zsh can be generated with the command kubectl completion zsh
. Sourcing the completion script in your shell enables kubectl autocompletion.
To do so in all your shell sessions, add the following to your ~/.zshrc
file:
source <(kubectl completion zsh)
If you have an alias for kubectl, you can extend shell completion to work with that alias:
echo 'alias k=kubectl' >>~/.zshrc echo 'compdef __start_kubectl k' >>~/.zshrc
After reloading your shell, kubectl autocompletion should be working.
If you get an error like complete:13: command not found: compdef
, then add the following to the beginning of your ~/.zshrc
file:
autoload -Uz compinit compinit
kubectl convert
pluginA plugin for Kubernetes command-line tool kubectl
, which allows you to convert manifests between different API versions. This can be particularly helpful to migrate manifests to a non-deprecated api version with newer Kubernetes release. For more info, visit migrate to non deprecated apis
Download the latest release with the command:
curl -LO https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl-convert
Validate the binary (optional)
Download the kubectl-convert checksum file:
curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl-convert.sha256"
Validate the kubectl-convert binary against the checksum file:
echo "$(<kubectl-convert.sha256) kubectl-convert" | sha256sum --check
If valid, the output is:
kubectl-convert: OK
If the check fails, sha256
exits with nonzero status and prints output similar to:
kubectl-convert: FAILED sha256sum: WARNING: 1 computed checksum did NOT match
Install kubectl-convert
sudo install -o root -g root -m 0755 kubectl-convert /usr/local/bin/kubectl-convert
Verify plugin is successfully installed
kubectl convert --help
If you do not see an error, it means the plugin is successfully installed.
© 2022 The Kubernetes Authors
Documentation Distributed under CC BY 4.0.
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-kubectl-linux