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  • Prerequisites
  • Installation
    • Verify install
    • Next steps
  • Advanced installation
    • Package install
    • Next steps
  • Uninstall package

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.

This page guides you through installing Kong Gateway in traditional mode, where it acts as both the control plane and data plane. Running in this mode may have a small performance impact.

We recommend using Konnect as your control plane to allow your data plane to run at maximum performance and decrease your deployment complexity.

Prerequisites

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

Once you have everything you need, choose an installation path:

  • Quickstart: Install script for a Kong Gateway package and PostgreSQL database
  • Advanced installation: Choose your own pieces to install

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!

Installation

The quickest way to get started with Kong Gateway is using the install script:

Kong Gateway
Kong Gateway (OSS)
bash <(curl -sS https://get.konghq.com/install) -v 3.5.0.1
bash <(curl -sS https://get.konghq.com/install) -p kong -v 3.5.0

This script detects your operating system and automatically installs the correct package. It also installs a PostgreSQL database and bootstraps Kong Gateway for you.

If you’d prefer to install just the Kong Gateway package, see the Package Install section.

Verify install

Once the script completes, run the following in the same terminal window:

curl -i http://localhost:8001

You should receive a 200 status code.

Next steps

Once Kong Gateway is running, you may want to do the following:

  • Optional: Add your Enterprise license
  • Enable Kong Manager:
    • Kong Manager Enterprise
    • Kong Manager OSS
  • Create services and routes

Advanced installation

Package install

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

The following steps install the package only, without a data store. You will need to set one up after installation.

Package
YUM repository

Install Kong Gateway on RHEL from the command line.

  1. Download the Kong package:

    Kong Gateway
    Kong Gateway (OSS)
    curl -Lo kong-enterprise-edition-3.5.0.1.rpm $(rpm --eval https://packages.konghq.com/public/gateway-35/rpm/el/%{rhel}/x86_64/kong-enterprise-edition-3.5.0.1.el%{rhel}.x86_64.rpm)
    curl -Lo kong-3.5.0.rpm $(rpm --eval https://packages.konghq.com/public/gateway-35/rpm/el/%{rhel}/x86_64/kong-3.5.0.el%{rhel}.x86_64.rpm)
  2. Install the package using yum or rpm.

    If you use the rpm install method, the packages only contain Kong Gateway. They don’t include any dependencies.

    yum
    rpm
    Kong Gateway
    Kong Gateway (OSS)
    sudo yum install -y kong-enterprise-edition-3.5.0.1.rpm
    sudo yum install -y kong-3.5.0.rpm

    The rpm method is only available for open-source packages. For the kong-enterprise-edition package, use yum.

    rpm -iv kong-3.5.0.rpm

    Installing directly using rpm is suitable for Red Hat’s Universal Base Image “minimal” variant. You will need to install Kong’s dependencies separately via microdnf.

Install the YUM repository from the command line.

  1. Download the Kong YUM repository:
     curl -1sLf "https://packages.konghq.com/public/gateway-35/config.rpm.txt?distro=el&codename=$(rpm --eval '%{rhel}')" | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/kong-gateway-35.repo
     sudo yum -q makecache -y --disablerepo='*' --enablerepo='kong-gateway-35'
    
  2. Install Kong:

    Kong Gateway
    Kong Gateway (OSS)
    sudo yum install -y kong-enterprise-edition-3.5.0.1
    sudo yum install -y kong-3.5.0

Next steps

Before starting Kong Gateway, set up a data store and update the kong.conf.default configuration property file with a reference to your data store.

Depending on your desired environment, also see the following guides:

  • Apply Enterprise license
  • Enable Kong Manager:
    • Kong Manager Enterprise
    • Kong Manager OSS

You can also check out Kong Gateway’s series of Getting Started guides to learn how get the most out of Kong Gateway.

Uninstall package

Kong Gateway
Kong Gateway (OSS)

To uninstall the package, run:

sudo yum remove kong-enterprise-edition

To uninstall the package, run:

sudo yum remove kong
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