balena-cli/INSTALL-LINUX.md

balena CLI Installation Instructions for Linux

These instructions are for the recommended installation option. They are suitable for most Linux distributions, except notably for Linux Alpine or Busybox. For these distros, see advanced installation options.

Selected operating system: Linux

1. Download the latest zip file from the latest release page. Look for a file name that ends with "-standalone.zip", for example:
   balena-cli-vX.Y.Z-linux-x64-standalone.zip

2. Extract the zip file contents to any folder you choose. The extracted contents will include a balena-cli folder.

3. Add the balena-cli folder to the system's PATH environment variable. There are several ways of achieving this on Linux: See this StackOverflow post. Close and reopen the terminal window so that the changes to PATH can take effect.

4. Check that the installation was successful by running the following commands on a command terminal:

   • balena version - should print the CLI's version
   • balena help - should print a list of available commands

No further steps are required to run most CLI commands. The balena ssh, scan, build, deploy and preload commands may require additional software to be installed, as described below.

To update the balena CLI to a new version, download a new release zip file and replace the previous installation folder. To uninstall, simply delete the folder and edit the PATH environment variable as described above.

Additional Dependencies

build, deploy

These commands require Docker or balenaEngine to be available (on a local or remote machine). Most users will simply follow Docker's installation instructions to install Docker on the same laptop (dev machine) where the balena CLI is installed. The advanced installation options document describes other possibilities.

balena ssh

The balena ssh command requires the ssh command-line tool to be available. Most Linux distributions will already have it installed. Otherwise, sudo apt-get install openssh-client should do the trick on Debian or Ubuntu.

The balena ssh command also requires an SSH key to be added to your balena account: see SSH Access documentation. The balena key* command set can also be used to list and manage SSH keys: see balena help -v.

balena scan

The balena scan command requires a multicast DNS (mDNS) service like Avahi, which is installed by default on most desktop Linux distributions. Otherwise, on Debian or Ubuntu, the installation command would be sudo apt-get install avahi-daemon.

balena preload

Like the build and deploy commands, the preload command requires Docker, with the additional restriction that Docker must be installed on the local machine (because Docker's bind mounting feature is used).