Boundary
Install Boundary clients
To manage your HCP Boundary instance, you should install the Boundary client tooling. You can install the command-line interface (CLI), Boundary Desktop app, and Boundary Client Agent using a single package installer. You can also install these components individually. The Boundary binary is available as source code, as a pre-compiled binary, or in packaged formats.
This tutorial does not show how to compile Boundary from source, but you can learn about compiling from source in the README to ensure you compile source into a trusted final binary.
To continue, select from the Boundary installer or Manual installation tabs below. HashiCorp recommends that you use the Boundary installer, which contains all the client components you need to get started.
We recommend using the following clients to get started with Boundary:
Boundary binary: The binary provides the command-line interface (CLI) tooling for connecting to Boundary targets, or administering a Boundary deployment.
Boundary Desktop Client app: The app provides a UI to browse and connect to available targets, manage sessions, and interact with targets using an embedded terminal.
Boundary Client Agent: Boundary's DNS agent runs alongside an authenticated Boundary client to enable transparent sessions. Transparent sessions allow users to switch from an active connection model to a passive connection model, and enable users who prefer to use their own client with the agent running as a background service to route session traffic automatically.
You can use the Boundary installer to install the Boundary binary, Desktop Client app, and Boundary Client Agent.
HashiCorp recommends that you use the Boundary installer to ensure compatible versions of the Boundary components are installed on your system. Refer to the Manual installation tab if you want to download the binary and Desktop Client separately.
The Boundary installer is available for macOS and Windows users. Select the tab for your system to continue.
Find the appropriate Boundary installer package for your system and download it. After you download the Boundary installer, execute the package installer.
If you want to enable the Boundary Client Agent, you should select the Boundary Client Agent component during the installation:
Boundary runs as a single binary named boundary
. Make sure that the boundary
binary is available on your PATH
. You can check the locations available on your path by running this command.
$ echo $PATH
Example output:
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
The output is a list of locations separated by colons. You can make Boundary
available by moving the binary to one of the listed locations, or by adding
Boundary's location to your PATH
.
Tip
Permanently add a new location to your path by editing your shell's settings file (usually called something like ~/.bashrc
, where the part of the file name after the .
and before rc
is the name of your shell). In that file you will see a line that starts with export PATH=
, followed by a colon-separated list of locations. Add the location of the Boundary binary to that list and save the file. Then reload your shell's configuration with the command source ~/.bashrc
, replacing bash
with the name of your shell.
Verify the installation
After installing Boundary, verify the installation worked by opening a new
command prompt or console, and checking that boundary
is available.
Tip
If you receive an error that Boundary is not found, try logging out and logging back in to your system (this is necessary sometimes for Windows users).
$ boundary
Usage: boundary <command> [args]
Commands:
accounts Manage Boundary accounts
auth-methods Manage Boundary auth-methods
auth-tokens Manage Boundary auth-tokens
authenticate Authenticate the Boundary command-line client
config Manage resources related to Boundary's local configuration
connect Authorize a session against a target and launch a proxied connection
database Manage Boundary's database
dev Start a Boundary dev environment
groups Manage Boundary groups
host-catalogs Manage Boundary host-catalogs
host-sets Manage Boundary host-sets
hosts Manage Boundary hosts
proxy Launch the Boundary CLI in proxy mode
roles Manage Boundary roles
scopes Manage Boundary scopes
server Start a Boundary server
sessions Manage Boundary sessions
targets Manage Boundary targets
users Manage Boundary users
Verify the version of Boundary.
$ boundary version
Version information:
Build Date: 2024-10-10T15:04:49Z
Git Revision: 2e3fdb718cb5ed20017b124deb6f438310b9dd0f
Version Number: 0.18.0
You have installed the Boundary clients! Continue to the next tutorial to continue learning about Boundary.