Install rpk

Redpanda Keeper (rpk) is a single binary application that provides a way to interact with your Redpanda clusters from the command line. You can install the rpk binary as a standalone tool for self-hosted and cloud deployments, as well as Kubernetes deployments.

Redpanda includes rpk as part of the installation. Follow this guide only if you want to install rpk as a standalone tool.

After you install rpk, you can use it to:

  • Monitor your cluster’s health.

  • Set up access control lists (ACLs) and other security features.

  • Create topics, produce to topics, and consume from topics.

  • Run the autotuner tool to optimize the Linux kernel to give you the best performance.

To install the rpk binary as a standalone application, follow the instructions for your operating system.

Install rpk on Linux

  1. Download the rpk archive for Linux, and make sure the version matches your Redpanda version.

    • To download the latest version of rpk:

      curl -LO https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda/releases/latest/download/rpk-linux-amd64.zip
      bash

    • To download a version other than the latest:

      curl -LO https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda/releases/download/v<version>/rpk-linux-amd64.zip
      bash

  2. Ensure that you have the folder ~/.local/bin:

    mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
    bash

  3. Add it to your $PATH:

    export PATH="~/.local/bin:$PATH"
    bash

  4. Unzip the rpk files to your ~/.local/bin/ directory:

    unzip rpk-linux-amd64.zip -d ~/.local/bin/
    bash

  5. Run rpk version to display the version of the rpk binary:

    rpk version
    bash
    23.3.1 (rev b5ade3f40)
    bash

Install rpk on macOS

  1. If you don’t have Homebrew installed, install it.

  2. Install rpk:

    brew install redpanda-data/tap/redpanda
    bash

  3. Run rpk version to display the version of the rpk binary:

    rpk version
    bash
    23.3.1 (rev b5ade3f40)
    bash
    This method installs the latest version of rpk, which is supported only with the latest version of Redpanda.

Next steps

For a list of all rpk commands and their syntax, see the rpk documentation.