github.com/outbrain/consul@v1.4.5/website/source/intro/getting-started/install.html.md (about) 1 --- 2 layout: "intro" 3 page_title: "Installing Consul" 4 sidebar_current: "gettingstarted-install" 5 description: |- 6 Consul must first be installed on every node that will be a member of the Consul cluster. To make installation easy, Consul is distributed as a binary package for all supported platforms and architectures. This page will not cover how to compile Consul from source. 7 --- 8 9 # Install Consul 10 11 Consul must first be installed on your machine. Consul is distributed as a 12 [binary package](/downloads.html) for all supported platforms and architectures. 13 This page will not cover how to compile Consul from source, but compiling from 14 source is covered in the [documentation](/docs/index.html) for those who want to 15 be sure they're compiling source they trust into the final binary. 16 17 ## Installing Consul 18 19 To install Consul, find the [appropriate package](/downloads.html) for 20 your system and download it. Consul is packaged as a zip archive. 21 22 After downloading Consul, unzip the package. Consul runs as a single binary 23 named `consul`. Any other files in the package can be safely removed and 24 Consul will still function. 25 26 The final step is to make sure that the `consul` binary is available on the `PATH`. 27 See [this page](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14637979/how-to-permanently-set-path-on-linux) 28 for instructions on setting the PATH on Linux and Mac. 29 [This page](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1618280/where-can-i-set-path-to-make-exe-on-windows) 30 contains instructions for setting the PATH on Windows. 31 32 ## Verifying the Installation 33 34 After installing Consul, verify the installation worked by opening a new 35 terminal session and checking that `consul` is available. By executing 36 `consul` you should see help output similar to this: 37 38 ```text 39 $ consul 40 usage: consul [--version] [--help] <command> [<args>] 41 42 Available commands are: 43 agent Runs a Consul agent 44 event Fire a new event 45 46 # ... 47 ``` 48 49 If you get an error that `consul` could not be found, your `PATH` 50 environment variable was not set up properly. Please go back and ensure 51 that your `PATH` variable contains the directory where Consul was 52 installed. 53 54 ## Next Steps 55 56 Consul is installed and ready for operation. Let's 57 [run the agent](agent.html)!