Kubectl Install

May 1, 2024 · 2 min read · k8s ·

This guide installs kubectl on ubuntu.

Installing kubectl

I base this guide on this page from the kubernetes documentation
Selecting X86-64, I can now download the file (into a new temporary directory):

 1osboxes@osboxes:~$ 
 2osboxes@osboxes:~$ mkdir yuvinst
 3osboxes@osboxes:~$ cd yuvinst/
 4osboxes@osboxes:~/yuvinst$    curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl" 
 5  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
 6                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
 7100   138  100   138    0     0    603      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--   602
 8100 49.0M  100 49.0M    0     0  8306k      0  0:00:06  0:00:06 --:--:-- 6697k
 9osboxes@osboxes:~/yuvinst$ 
10osboxes@osboxes:~/yuvinst$ ls -l
11total 50252
12-rw-rw-r-- 1 osboxes osboxes 51454104 May  1 05:03 kubectl
13osboxes@osboxes:~/yuvinst$

This file is actually the kubectl binary itself.
The install command is actually just a fancy copy/move command:

 1osboxes@osboxes:~/yuvinst$ ls
 2kubectl
 3osboxes@osboxes:~/yuvinst$ 
 4osboxes@osboxes:~/yuvinst$ sudo install -o root -g root -m 0755 kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl
 5[sudo] password for osboxes: 
 6osboxes@osboxes:~/yuvinst$ 
 7osboxes@osboxes:~/yuvinst$ ls
 8kubectl
 9osboxes@osboxes:~/yuvinst$ rm kubectl 
10osboxes@osboxes:~/yuvinst$

I can now run kubectl:

1osboxes@osboxes:~/yuvinst$ 
2osboxes@osboxes:~/yuvinst$ kubectl version
3Client Version: v1.30.0
4Kustomize Version: v5.0.4-0.20230601165947-6ce0bf390ce3
5The connection to the server localhost:8080 was refused - did you specify the right host or port?
6osboxes@osboxes:~/yuvinst$

Note that kubectl is not directed to a specific cluster yet.
We are going to create a cluster with minikube.
This is when minikube will create a configuration for kubectl in a ~/.kube directory.