CLI Quick Start

Install Vault

  • 5min

  • Vault
  • Video

Vault must first be installed on your machine. Vault is available as source code, as a pre-compiled binary, or in packaged formats.

This page will not cover how to compile Vault from source, but compiling from source is covered in the documentation for those who want to be sure they're compiling source they trust into the final binary.

Install Vault

To install Vault, find the appropriate package for your system and download it. Vault is packaged as a zip archive.

After downloading Vault, unzip the package. Vault runs as a single binary named vault. Any other files in the package can be safely removed and Vault will still function.

The final step is to make sure that the vault binary is available on the PATH. See this page for instructions on setting the PATH on Linux and Mac. This page contains instructions for setting the PATH on Windows.

Verifying the Installation

After installing Vault, verify the installation worked by opening a new terminal session and checking that the vault binary is available. By executing vault, you should see help output similar to the following:

$ vault

Usage: vault <command> [args]

Common commands:
    read        Read data and retrieves secrets
    write       Write data, configuration, and secrets
    delete      Delete secrets and configuration
    list        List data or secrets
    login       Authenticate locally
    agent       Start a Vault agent
    server      Start a Vault server
    status      Print seal and HA status
    unwrap      Unwrap a wrapped secret

Other commands:
    audit          Interact with audit devices
    auth           Interact with auth methods
    debug          Runs the debug command
    kv             Interact with Vault's Key-Value storage
    lease          Interact with leases
    monitor        Stream log messages from a Vault server
    namespace      Interact with namespaces
    operator       Perform operator-specific tasks
    path-help      Retrieve API help for paths
    plugin         Interact with Vault plugins and catalog
    policy         Interact with policies
    print          Prints runtime configurations
    secrets        Interact with secrets engines
    ssh            Initiate an SSH session
    token          Interact with tokens

$ vault

Usage: vault <command> [args]

Common commands:
    read        Read data and retrieves secrets
    write       Write data, configuration, and secrets
    delete      Delete secrets and configuration
    list        List data or secrets
    login       Authenticate locally
    agent       Start a Vault agent
    server      Start a Vault server
    status      Print seal and HA status
    unwrap      Unwrap a wrapped secret

Other commands:
    audit          Interact with audit devices
    auth           Interact with auth methods
    debug          Runs the debug command
    kv             Interact with Vault's Key-Value storage
    lease          Interact with leases
    monitor        Stream log messages from a Vault server
    namespace      Interact with namespaces
    operator       Perform operator-specific tasks
    path-help      Retrieve API help for paths
    plugin         Interact with Vault plugins and catalog
    policy         Interact with policies
    print          Prints runtime configurations
    secrets        Interact with secrets engines
    ssh            Initiate an SSH session
    token          Interact with tokens

If you get an error that the binary could not be found, then your PATH environment variable was not setup properly. Please go back and ensure that your PATH variable contains the directory where Vault was installed.

Otherwise, Vault is installed and ready to go!

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This tutorial also appears in:

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    Getting Started with Vault UI
    Manage Vault environment as well as your secrets using Vault UI.
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