How To Install K9s on openSUSE

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install K9s on openSUSE. K9s is an open-source CLI tool that provides a terminal-based UI for managing Kubernetes clusters. It offers a real-time, interactive, and customizable interface that allows you to easily view and control your Kubernetes resources, such as pods, deployments, services, and more. With K9s, you can perform common cluster management tasks, access container logs, and even execute commands directly within the selected pod or container.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the K9s on openSUSE.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: openSUSE (Leap or Tumbleweed)
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• Basic familiarity with terminal commands.
• You will need access to the terminal to execute commands. openSUSE provides the Terminal application for this purpose. It can be found in your Applications menu.
• You’ll need an active internet connection.
• You’ll need administrative (root) access or a user account with sudo privileges.

Install K9s on openSUSE

Step 1. Update System Packages.

Before installing K9s, it’s crucial to ensure your openSUSE system is up-to-date and properly configured. Follow these steps to prepare your system:

sudo zypper refresh
sudo zypper update

The zypper refresh command refreshes the repository cache, while zypper update upgrades all installed packages to their latest available versions. This process may take a few minutes, depending on the number of updates available and your internet connection speed.

Step 2. Installing K9s.

• Method 1: Installing K9s via Snap

Snap is a package management system that allows you to easily install and manage applications on Linux distributions, including openSUSE. Here’s how to install K9s using Snap:

Add the snappy repository to openSUSE:

sudo zypper addrepo --refresh https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/system:/snappy/openSUSE_Leap_15.5 snappy

Import the repository’s GPG key:

sudo zypper --gpg-auto-import-keys refresh

Install the snapd package:

sudo zypper install snapd

Enable and start the snapd services:

sudo systemctl enable --now snapd
sudo systemctl enable --now snapd.apparmor

Install K9s using the snap command:

sudo snap install k9s

• Method 2: Installing K9s via Homebrew

Homebrew is a popular package manager that originated on macOS but is also available on Linux. Here’s how to install K9s using Homebrew on openSUSE:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Add the Homebrew path to your shell profile:

echo 'eval "$(/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/brew shellenv)"' >> ~/.profile
eval "$(/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/brew shellenv)"

Install K9s using the brew command:

brew install derailed/k9s/k9s

• Method 3: Manual Installation from Binary

If you prefer a manual installation approach, you can download the K9s binary directly from the official GitHub repository and set it up on your openSUSE system. Here’s how:

wget https://github.com/derailed/k9s/releases/download/v0.32.5/k9s_Linux_amd64.tar.gz

Extract the downloaded archive:

tar -xvzf k9s_Linux_amd64.tar.gz

Move the K9s binary to a directory in your system’s PATH:

sudo mv k9s /usr/local/bin/

Verify the installation by running:

k9s version

Step 3. Configuring K9s.

K9s provides various configuration options to customize its behavior and appearance. The main configuration file is named config.yaml and is located in the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/k9s directory. Some common configuration options include:

• refreshRate: Specifies the UI refresh interval in seconds (default: 2)
• readOnly: Disables modification commands like delete/kill/edit when set to true (default: false)
• noIcons: Toggles the display of icons in the UI (default: false)
• logger.tail: Defines the number of log lines to display (default: 100)

You can edit the config.yaml file to adjust these settings according to your preferences.

To launch K9s, simply run the following command in your terminal:

k9s

K9s will connect to your Kubernetes cluster using the current context and display the main interface.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed K9s. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing K9s on your openSUSE system. For additional or useful information, we recommend you check the official K9s website.