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Install the meshctl CLI

Use the Gloo Mesh command line interface (CLI) tool, meshctl, to set up Gloo Mesh, register clusters, describe your Gloo Mesh resources, and more.

Quick installation

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

Linux and macOS:

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

Windows: Download the latest stable release from https://storage.googleapis.com/meshctl/v2.0.7/meshctl-windows-amd64.exe.

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/v2.0.7/meshctl-darwin-amd64.

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

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

curl -sL https://run.solo.io/meshctl/install | GLOO_MESH_VERSION=v2.0.7 sh -

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 Windows, macOS, or Linux.
```
export PATH=$HOME/.gloo-mesh/bin:$PATH
echo $PATH
```
Example output:
```
/Users/<name>/.gloo-mesh/bin:/usr/local/bin
```
Verify that you can run meshctl commands.
```
meshctl version
```

On macOS, you might see the following warning: “meshctl” cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer. In the Finder app, navigate to the ~/.gloo-mesh/binmeshctl executable file, right-click the file, click Open, and confirm that you want to open the file. For more information, try searching the warning and following a guide.

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

Do you have multiple cluster environments that require different versions of Gloo Mesh, 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 Mesh versions match.

Upgrading the meshctl CLI does not upgrade the Gloo Mesh version that you run in your clusters.

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 Mesh version that is installed in your clusters.

Slight skews within minor versions typically work, such as meshctl 1.0.7 and Gloo Mesh 1.0.10.
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