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