Installation options for Eksctl

eksctl is available to install from official releases as described below. We recommend that you install eksctl from only the official GitHub releases. You may opt to use a third-party installer, but please be advised that AWS does not maintain nor support these methods of installation. Use them at your own discretion.

Prerequisite

You will need to have AWS API credentials configured. What works for AWS CLI or any other tools (kops, Terraform, etc.) should be sufficient. You can use ~/.aws/credentials file or environment variables. For more information, see the AWS CLI Reference.

You will also need AWS IAM Authenticator for Kubernetes command (either aws-iam-authenticator or aws eks get-token (available in version 1.16.156 or greater of AWS CLI) in your PATH.

The IAM account used for EKS cluster creation should have these minimal access levels.

AWS Service	Access Level
CloudFormation	Full Access
EC2	Full: Tagging Limited: List, Read, Write
EC2 Auto Scaling	Limited: List, Write
EKS	Full Access
IAM	Limited: List, Read, Write, Permissions Management
Systems Manager	Limited: List, Read

For Unix

To download the latest release, run:

# for ARM systems, set ARCH to: `arm64`, `armv6` or `armv7`
ARCH=amd64
PLATFORM=$(uname -s)_$ARCH

curl -sLO "https://github.com/eksctl-io/eksctl/releases/latest/download/eksctl_$PLATFORM.tar.gz"

# (Optional) Verify checksum
curl -sL "https://github.com/eksctl-io/eksctl/releases/latest/download/eksctl_checksums.txt" | grep $PLATFORM | sha256sum --check

tar -xzf eksctl_$PLATFORM.tar.gz -C /tmp && rm eksctl_$PLATFORM.tar.gz

sudo install -m 0755 /tmp/eksctl /usr/local/bin && rm /tmp/eksctl

For Windows

Direct download (latest release):

• AMD64/x86_64

• ARMv6

• ARMv7

• ARM64

Make sure to unzip the archive to a folder in the PATH variable.

Optionally, verify the checksum:

1. Download the checksum file: latest

2. Use Command Prompt to manually compare CertUtil's output to the checksum file downloaded.

     REM Replace amd64 with armv6, armv7 or arm64
     CertUtil -hashfile eksctl_Windows_amd64.zip SHA256

3. Using PowerShell to automate the verification using the -eq operator to get a True or False result:

   # Replace amd64 with armv6, armv7 or arm64
    (Get-FileHash -Algorithm SHA256 .\eksctl_Windows_amd64.zip).Hash -eq ((Get-Content .\eksctl_checksums.txt) -match 'eksctl_Windows_amd64.zip' -split ' ')[0]

Using Git Bash:

# for ARM systems, set ARCH to: `arm64`, `armv6` or `armv7`
ARCH=amd64
PLATFORM=windows_$ARCH

curl -sLO "https://github.com/eksctl-io/eksctl/releases/latest/download/eksctl_$PLATFORM.zip"

# (Optional) Verify checksum
curl -sL "https://github.com/eksctl-io/eksctl/releases/latest/download/eksctl_checksums.txt" | grep $PLATFORM | sha256sum --check

unzip eksctl_$PLATFORM.zip -d $HOME/bin

rm eksctl_$PLATFORM.zip

The eksctl executable is placed in $HOME/bin, which is in $PATH from Git Bash.

Homebrew

You can use Homebrew to install software on MacOS and Linux.

AWS maintains a Homebrew tap including eksctl.

For more information about the Homebrew tap, see the project on Github and the Homebrew formula for eksctl.

To install eksctl with Homebrew

1. (Prerequisite) Install Homebrew

2. Add the AWS tap

   brew tap aws/tap

3. Install eksctl

   brew install aws/tap/eksctl

Docker

For every release and RC a container image is pushed to ECR repository public.ecr.aws/eksctl/eksctl. Learn more about the usage on ECR Public Gallery - eksctl. For example,

docker run --rm -it public.ecr.aws/eksctl/eksctl version

Shell Completion

Bash

To enable bash completion, run the following, or put it in ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile:

. <(eksctl completion bash)

Zsh

For zsh completion, please run:

mkdir -p ~/.zsh/completion/
eksctl completion zsh > ~/.zsh/completion/_eksctl

and put the following in ~/.zshrc:

fpath=($fpath ~/.zsh/completion)

Note if you’re not running a distribution like oh-my-zsh you may first have to enable autocompletion (and put in ~/.zshrc to make it persistent):

autoload -U compinit
compinit

Fish

The below commands can be used for fish auto completion:

mkdir -p ~/.config/fish/completions
eksctl completion fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/eksctl.fish

Powershell

The below command can be referred for setting it up. Please note that the path might be different depending on your system settings.

eksctl completion powershell > C:\Users\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Scripts\eksctl.ps1

Updates

Important

If you install eksctl by directly downloading it (not using a package manager) you need to manually update it.