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Debian

To install and run Kuma execute the following steps:

1. Download Kuma
2. Run Kuma
3. Use Kuma

Finally, you can follow the Quickstart to take it from here and continue your Kuma journey.

Download Kuma

Run the following script to automatically detect the operating system and download Kuma:

curl -L https://kuma.io/installer.sh | VERSION={"edition"=>"kuma", "version"=>"2.9.1", "release"=>"2.9.x", "latest"=>true, "releaseDate"=>"2024-10-22", "endOfLifeDate"=>"2025-10-22", "branch"=>"release-2.9"} sh -

or you can <a href=”https://packages.konghq.com/public/kuma-legacy/raw/names/kuma-rhel-amd64/versions/{“edition”=>”kuma”, “version”=>”2.9.1”, “release”=>”2.9.x”, “latest”=>true, “releaseDate”=>”2024-10-22”, “endOfLifeDate”=>”2025-10-22”, “branch”=>”release-2.9”}/kuma-{“edition”=>”kuma”, “version”=>”2.9.1”, “release”=>”2.9.x”, “latest”=>true, “releaseDate”=>”2024-10-22”, “endOfLifeDate”=>”2025-10-22”, “branch”=>”release-2.9”}-rhel-amd64.tar.gz”>download</a> the distribution manually.

Then extract the archive with: tar xvzf kuma-{"edition"=>"kuma", "version"=>"2.9.1", "release"=>"2.9.x", "latest"=>true, "releaseDate"=>"2024-10-22", "endOfLifeDate"=>"2025-10-22", "branch"=>"release-2.9"}.

Make sure you have tar and gzip installed.

Run Kuma

Once downloaded, you will find the contents of Kuma in the kuma-{"edition"=>"kuma", "version"=>"2.9.1", "release"=>"2.9.x", "latest"=>true, "releaseDate"=>"2024-10-22", "endOfLifeDate"=>"2025-10-22", "branch"=>"release-2.9"} folder. In this folder, you will find - among other files - the bin directory that stores all the executables for Kuma.

You can start the control-plane with: kuma-{"edition"=>"kuma", "version"=>"2.9.1", "release"=>"2.9.x", "latest"=>true, "releaseDate"=>"2024-10-22", "endOfLifeDate"=>"2025-10-22", "branch"=>"release-2.9"}/bin/kuma-cp run

This example will run Kuma in standalone mode for a “flat” deployment, but there are more advanced deployment modes like “multi-zone”.

We suggest adding the kumactl executable to your PATH so that it’s always available in every working directory. Or - alternatively - you can also create link in /usr/local/bin/ by executing:

ln -s kuma-{"edition"=>"kuma", "version"=>"2.9.1", "release"=>"2.9.x", "latest"=>true, "releaseDate"=>"2024-10-22", "endOfLifeDate"=>"2025-10-22", "branch"=>"release-2.9"}/bin/kumactl /usr/local/bin/kumactl

Note: By default this will run Kuma with a memory store, but for production you have to use a persistent storage like PostgreSQL by updating the conf/kuma-cp.conf file.

Use Kuma

Kuma (kuma-cp) is now running! Now that Kuma has been installed you can access the control-plane via either the GUI, the HTTP API, or the CLI:

Kuma ships with a read-only GUI that you can use to retrieve Kuma resources. By default the GUI listens on the API port and defaults to :5681/gui.

To access Kuma you can navigate to 127.0.0.1:5681/gui to see the GUI.

You can use the kumactl CLI to perform read and write operations on Kuma resources. The kumactl binary is a client to the Kuma HTTP API. For example:

kumactl get meshes
# NAME          mTLS      METRICS      LOGGING   TRACING
# default       off       off          off       off

or you can enable mTLS on the default Mesh with:

echo "type: Mesh
name: default
mtls:
  enabledBackend: ca-1
  backends:
  - name: ca-1
    type: builtin" | kumactl apply -f -

You can configure kumactl to point to any zone kuma-cp instance by running:

kumactl config control-planes add --name=XYZ --address=http://{address-to-kuma}:5681

You will notice that Kuma automatically creates a Mesh entity with name default.

Quickstart

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Kuma 🚀.

In order to start using Kuma, it’s time to check out the quickstart guide for Universal deployments.