Install the meshctl CLI

Use the Gloo command line interface (CLI) tool, meshctl, to set up Gloo Platform, register clusters, describe your Gloo resources, and more. You can also review other CLI tools that you commonly interact with while using Gloo.

Quick installation

Install the latest version of meshctl. Make sure to add meshctl to your PATH (see macOS, or Linux for specific instructions).

• Linux and macOS: If you use Gloo Mesh 2.2.0 or 2.2.1 on macOS X Ventura 13.0, see the specific install instructions instead.

  curl -sL https://run.solo.io/meshctl/install | sh
  

• Windows is not currently supported.

macOS X Ventura 13.0 (meshctl 2.2.0 and 2.2.1 only)

When you use Gloo Mesh 2.2.0 or 2.2.1 on macOS X Ventura 13.0, UPX-compressed amd64 and x86_64 executables do not work and result in a segmentation fault error.

For example, when you attempt to run a command such as meshctl check server on MacOS X Ventura, the command returns the following error message:

[1] 2931 segmentation fault meshctl check server

To fix this issue, you have two options:

• Upgrade Gloo Mesh to 2.2.2 or later.
• Unpack the binary for meshctl using UPX v4.0.0 instead, using the following steps.

1. Download version 2.2.0 or 2.2.1 of the meshctl CLI, and add it to your PATH system variable.

   export GLOO_MESH_VERSION=v2.2.1
   curl -sL https://run.solo.io/meshctl/install | GLOO_MESH_VERSION=${GLOO_MESH_VERSION} sh -
   export PATH=$HOME/.gloo-mesh/bin:$PATH
   

2. Unpack the binary for meshctl using UPX v4.0.0.

   git clone https://github.com/upx/upx.git
   cd upx
   git submodule update --init
   git checkout -b v4.0.0 tags/v4.0.0
   make
   ./build/release/upx -d ~/.gloo-mesh/bin/meshctl
   

3. Verify that you can run meshctl commands and check the client version matches the version that you installed.

   meshctl version
   

   Example output:

      {
         "client": {
           "version": "2.2.4"
      },
      

Install a specific version of the CLI

You can pass a variable on the command line to download a specific version of meshctl. The installation script uses the version and automatically detects your operating system to download the binary files from a public Google storage bucket, https://storage.googleapis.com/meshctl/. For example, if you install the latest version on a macOS workstation, the binary file is downloaded from https://storage.googleapis.com/meshctl/v2.2.4/meshctl-darwin-amd64.

1. From the Changelog, find the release version that you want to install.

2. Install the meshctl CLI, setting the Gloo version to install.

   curl -sL https://run.solo.io/meshctl/install | GLOO_MESH_VERSION=v2.2.4 sh -
   

3. Add meshctl on your PATH system variable for global access on the command line. The steps vary depending on your operating system. The following example is for macOS. For more information, see macOS, or Linux.

   export PATH=$HOME/.gloo-mesh/bin:$PATH
   echo $PATH
   

   Example output:

   /Users/<name>/.gloo-mesh/bin:/usr/local/bin
   

4. Verify that you can run meshctl commands and check the client version matches the version that you installed.

   meshctl version
   

   Example output:

       {
         "client": {
           "version": "2.2.4"
         },
       

Good job! You now have the version of meshctl that you want installed. Next, install Gloo in your clusters.

Do you have multiple cluster environments that require different versions of Gloo, Istio, and Kubernetes? Consider downloading each meshctl, istioctl, and kubectl version binary file to a separate directory. Then, you can set up an alias in your local command line interface profile to point to the binary file directory that matches the version of the cluster environment that you want to work with.

Upgrade the CLI

To upgrade, re-install the CLI. You can install the latest or a specific version. Make sure that your meshctl and Gloo versions match.

Uninstall the CLI

To uninstall meshctl, you can delete the executable file from your system, such as on macOS in the following example.

rm ~/.gloo-mesh/bin/meshctl

Skew policy

Use the same version of the meshctl CLI as the Gloo version that is installed in your clusters.

• Slight skews within minor versions typically work, such as meshctl 2.0.8 and Gloo 2.0.9.
• Compatibility across beta versions is not guaranteed, even within minor version skews.
• To resolve bugs in meshctl, you might have to upgrade the entire CLI to a specific or latest version.

Configuration file

When you run certain meshctl commands (like meshctl check or meshctl debug report), the commands attempt to read a configuration file located inside the home directory (e.g. $HOME/.gloo-mesh/meshctl-config.yaml on Linux). This configuration file contains information about your management and workload clusters. For example, if cluster-1 serves as the management cluster and both cluster-1 and cluster-2 are registered as workload clusters, meshctl-config.yaml might look like the following:

apiVersion: v1
clusters:
  cluster-1: # data plane cluster
    kubeConfig: <home_directory>/.kube/config
    kubeContext: kind-cluster-1
    namespace: gloo-mesh
  cluster-2: # data plane cluster
    kubeConfig: <home_directory>/.kube/config
    kubeContext: kind-cluster-2
    namespace: gloo-mesh
  managementPlane: # management cluster
    kubeConfig: <home_directory>/.kube/config
    kubeContext: kind-cluster-1
    namespace: gloo-mesh

Some meshctl commands (like meshctl install) will make changes to the configuration automatically. You can also configure the meshctl-config.yaml file by using the following command, which opens an interactive prompt.

meshctl cluster configure

You can configure this file non-interactively by using the --disable-prompt flag.

meshctl cluster configure --disable-prompt --cluster-name managementPlane --kubeconfig <home_directory>/.kube/config --kubecontext kind-cluster-1

Additionally, you can override the default config file location when you run meshctl commands (for either writing or reading the config file) with the --config flag. For example,

meshctl install --config /path/to/file/meshctl-config.yaml [remaining arguments...]

Reference documentation

For more information about each meshctl command, see the CLI documentation or run the help flag for a command.

meshctl cluster --help

Other command line tools

As you use Gloo, you might need the following common cluster management command line tools on your local system.