Install Kong Gateway on RHEL

The Kong Gateway software is governed by the Kong Software License Agreement. Kong is licensed under an Apache 2.0 license.

Prerequisites

• A supported system with root or root-equivalent access.
• (Enterprise only) A license.json file from Kong

Download and Install

You can install Kong Gateway by downloading an installation package or using the yum repository.

Note: In July of 2023 Kong announced that package hosting was shifting from https://download.konghq.com to https://packages.konghq.com. Read more about it in this blog post!

Set up configs

Kong Gateway comes with a default configuration property file that can be found at /etc/kong/kong.conf.default if you installed Kong Gateway with one of the official packages. This configuration file is used for setting Kong Gateway’s configuration properties at startup.

Kong Gateway offers two options for storing the configuration properties for all of Kong Gateway’s configured entities, a database or a yaml declarative configuration file. Before starting Kong Gateway you must update the kong.conf.default configuration property file with a reference to your data store.

To alter the default properties listed in the kong.conf.default file and configure Kong Gateway, make a copy of the file, rename it (for example kong.conf), make your updates, and save it to the same location.

Using a database

First, configure Kong Gateway using the kong.conf configuration file so it can connect to your database. See the data store section of the Configuration Property Reference for all relevant configuration parameters.

The following instructions use PostgreSQL as a database to store Kong configuration.

1. Provision a database and a user before starting Kong Gateway:

    CREATE USER kong WITH PASSWORD 'super_secret'; CREATE DATABASE kong OWNER kong;
   

2. Run one of the following Kong Gateway migrations:

   • In Enterprise environments, we strongly recommend seeding a password for the Super Admin user with the kong migrations command. This allows you to use RBAC (Role Based Access Control) at a later time, if needed. Create an environment variable with the desired Super Admin password and store the password in a safe place:

      KONG_PASSWORD={PASSWORD} kong migrations bootstrap -c {PATH_TO_KONG.CONF_FILE}
     

     Important: Setting your Kong password (KONG_PASSWORD) using a value containing four ticks (for example, KONG_PASSWORD="a''a'a'a'a") causes a PostgreSQL syntax error on bootstrap. To work around this issue, do not use special characters in your password.

   • If you aren’t using Enterprise, run the following:

      kong migrations bootstrap -c {PATH_TO_KONG.CONF_FILE}
     

Note: Older versions of PostgreSQL use ident authentication by default, newer versions (PSQL 10+) use scram-sha-256. To allow the kong user to communicate with the database locally, change the authentication method to md5 by modifying the PostgreSQL configuration file.

Using a yaml declarative config file

If you want to store the configuration properties for all of Kong Gateway’s configured entities in a yaml declarative configuration file, also referred to as DB-less mode, you must create a kong.yml file and update the kong.conf configuration file to include the file path to the kong.yml file.

First, the following command will generate a kong.yml declarative configuration file in your current folder:

kong config init

The generated kong.yml file contains instructions for how to configure Kong Gateway using the file.

Second, you must configure Kong Gateway using the kong.conf configuration file so it is aware of your declarative configuration file.

Set the database option to off and the declarative_config option to the path of your kong.yml file as in the following example:

database = off
declarative_config = {PATH_TO_KONG.CONF_FILE}

Start Kong Gateway

Important: When you start Kong Gateway, the NGINX master process runs as root, and the worker processes run as kong by default. If this is not the desired behavior, you can switch the NGINX master process to run on the built-in kong user or to a custom non-root user before starting Kong Gateway.

For more information, see Running Kong as a Non-Root User.

Start Kong Gateway using the following command:

kong start -c {PATH_TO_KONG.CONF_FILE}

Verify install

If everything went well, you should see a message (Kong started) informing you that Kong Gateway is running.

You can also check using the Admin API:

curl -i http://localhost:8001

You should receive a 200 status code.

By default, listens on the following ports:

• :8000: Port on which listens for incoming HTTP traffic from your clients, and forwards it to your upstream services.
• :8443: Port on which listens for incoming HTTPS traffic. This port has similar behavior as the :8000 port, except that it expects HTTPS traffic only. This port can be disabled with the kong.confconfiguration file.
• :8001: Port on which the Admin API used to configure listens.
• :8444: Port on which the Admin API listens for HTTPS traffic.

Post-install configuration

The following steps are all optional and depend on the choices you want to make for your environment.

Apply Enterprise license

If you have an Enterprise license for Kong Gateway, apply it using one of the methods below, depending on your environment.

curl -i -X POST http://localhost:8001/licenses \
  -d payload='{"license":{"payload":{"admin_seats":"1","customer":"Example Company, Inc","dataplanes":"1","license_creation_date":"2017-07-20","license_expiration_date":"2017-07-20","license_key":"00141000017ODj3AAG_a1V41000004wT0OEAU","product_subscription":"Konnect Enterprise","support_plan":"None"},"signature":"6985968131533a967fcc721244a979948b1066967f1e9cd65dbd8eeabe060fc32d894a2945f5e4a03c1cd2198c74e058ac63d28b045c2f1fcec95877bd790e1b","version":"1"}}'

http POST :8001/licenses \
  payload='{"license":{"payload":{"admin_seats":"1","customer":"Example Company, Inc","dataplanes":"1","license_creation_date":"2017-07-20","license_expiration_date":"2017-07-20","license_key":"00141000017ODj3AAG_a1V41000004wT0OEAU","product_subscription":"Konnect Enterprise","support_plan":"None"},"signature":"6985968131533a967fcc721244a979948b1066967f1e9cd65dbd8eeabe060fc32d894a2945f5e4a03c1cd2198c74e058ac63d28b045c2f1fcec95877bd790e1b","version":"1"}}'

$ scp license.json <system_username>@<server>:~

$ scp license.json /etc/kong/license.json

Enable Kong Manager

If you’re running Kong Gateway with a database (either in traditional or hybrid mode), you can enable Kong Gateway’s graphical user interface (GUI), Kong Manager. See the Kong Manager setup guide or the Kong Manager OSS guide for more information.

Enable Dev Portal

If you’re running Kong Gateway with a database (either in traditional or hybrid mode), you can enable the Dev Portal

1. Enable the Dev Portal in the kong.conf file by setting the portal property to on and the portal_gui_host property to the DNS or IP address of the system. For example:

    portal = on
    portal_gui_host = localhost:8003
   

2. Restart Kong Gateway for the setting to take effect, using the following command:

    kong restart -c {PATH_TO_KONG.CONF_FILE}
   

3. To enable the Dev Portal for a workspace, execute the following command, updating DNSorIP to reflect the IP or valid DNS for the system:

   curl -X PATCH http://localhost:8001/workspaces/default \
    --data "config.portal=true"
   

4. Access the Dev Portal for the default workspace using the following URL, substituting your own DNS or IP:

    http://localhost:8003/default
   

Troubleshooting and support

For troubleshooting license issues, see:

• Deployment options for licenses
• /licenses API reference
• /licenses API examples If you did not receive an HTTP/1.1 200 OK message or need assistance completing your setup, reach out to your Kong Support contact or go to the Support Portal.

Next steps

Check out Kong Gateway’s series of Getting Started guides to get the most out of Kong Gateway.