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Install the meshctl CLI

Use the Gloo command line interface (CLI) tool, meshctl, to set up Gloo Mesh, 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:

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

Windows is not currently supported.

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/v2.4.1/meshctl-darwin-amd64.

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

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

curl -sL https://run.solo.io/meshctl/install | GLOO_MESH_VERSION=v2.4.1 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 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 and check the client version matches the version that you installed.
```
meshctl version
```
Example output:
```
    {
      "client": {
        "version": "2.4.1"
      },
    
```

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 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.

Upgrading the meshctl CLI does not upgrade the Gloo 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 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.

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.

CLI tool	Description
Cloud provider CLI	The CLI to interact with your preferred cloud provider, such as `aws` or `gcloud`. You might also have local cluster testing tools such as `kind` or `k3d`. `gcloud`.
`istioctl`	The Istio command line tool. The guides in this documentation use Istio version 1.18.2. To check your installed version, run `istioctl version`.
`jq`	Parse JSON output, such as from logs, to get values that can be used in subsequent commands, environment variables, or other contexts.
`kubectl`	The Kubernetes command line tool. Download the `kubectl` version that is within one minor version of the Kubernetes clusters you plan to use with Gloo.
`openssl`	Make sure that you have the OpenSSL version of `openssl`, not LibreSSL. The `openssl` version must be at least 1.1. Check the `openssl` version that is installed. If you see LibreSSL in the output, continue to the next step. `openssl version` Install the OpenSSL version (not LibreSSL). For example, you might use Homebrew. `brew install openssl` Review the output of the OpenSSL installation for the path of the binary file. You can choose to export the binary to your path, or call the entire path whenever the following steps use an `openssl` command. For example, `openssl` might be installed along the following path: `/usr/local/opt/openssl@3/bin/` To run commands, you can append the path so that your terminal uses this installed version of OpenSSL, and not the default LibreSSL. `/usr/local/opt/openssl@3/bin/openssl req -new -newkey rsa:4096 -x509 -sha256 -days 3650...`