Install by using the Knative Operator CLI Plugin¶

Knative provides a CLI Plugin to install, configure and manage Knative via the command lines. This CLI plugin facilitates you with a parameter-driven way to configure the Knative cluster, without interacting with the complexities of the custom resources.

Prerequisites¶

Before installing Knative, you must meet the following prerequisites:

• For prototyping purposes, Knative works on most local deployments of Kubernetes. For example, you can use a local, one-node cluster that has 3 CPUs and 4 GB of memory.

  Tip

  You can install a local distribution of Knative for development purposes using the Knative Quickstart plugin

• For production purposes, it is recommended that:

  • If you have only one node in your cluster, you need at least 6 CPUs, 6 GB of memory, and 30 GB of disk storage.
  • If you have multiple nodes in your cluster, for each node you need at least 2 CPUs, 4 GB of memory, and 20 GB of disk storage.
  • You have a cluster that uses Kubernetes v1.28 or newer.
  • You have installed the kubectl CLI.
  • Your Kubernetes cluster must have access to the internet, because Kubernetes needs to be able to fetch images. To pull from a private registry, see Deploying images from a private container registry.

Verifying CLI binaries¶

Knative kn CLI releases from 1.9 onwards are signed with cosign. You can use the following steps to verify the CLI binaries:

1. Download the files you want, and the checksums.txt, checksum.txt.pem, and checksums.txt.sig files from the releases page, by running the commands:

   wget https://github.com/knative/client/releases/download/<kn-version>/checksums.txt
   wget https://github.com/knative/client/releases/download/<kn-version>/kn-darwin-amd64
   wget https://github.com/knative/client/releases/download/<kn-version>/checksums.txt.sig
   wget https://github.com/knative/client/releases/download/<kn-version>/checksums.txt.pem
   

   Where <kn-version> is the version of the CLI that you want to verify. For example, knative-v1.8.0.

2. Verify the signature by running the command:

   cosign verify-blob \
   --cert checksums.txt.pem \
   --signature checksums.txt.sig \
   --certificate-identity=signer@knative-releases.iam.gserviceaccount.com \
   --certificate-oidc-issuer=https://accounts.google.com \
   checksums.txt
   

3. If the signature is valid, you can then verify the SHA256 sums match the downloaded binary, by running the command:

   sha256sum --ignore-missing -c checksums.txt
   

Install the Knative Operator CLI Plugin¶

Before you install the Knative Operator CLI Plugin, first install the Knative CLI.

Make the plugin executable by running the command:

chmod +x kn-operator

Create the directory for the kn plugin:

mkdir -p ~/.config/kn/plugins

Move the file to a plugin directory for kn:

cp kn-operator ~/.config/kn/plugins

Verify the installation of the Knative Operator CLI Plugin¶

You can run the following command to verify the installation:

kn operator -h

You should see more information about how to use this CLI plugin.

Install the Knative Operator¶

You can install Knative Operator of any specific version under any specific namespace. By default, the namespace is default, and the version is the latest.

To install the latest version of Knative Operator, run:

kn operator install

To install Knative Operator under a certain namespace, e.g. knative-operator, run:

kn operator install -n knative-operator

To install Knative Operator of a specific version, e.g. 1.7.1, run:

kn operator install -v 1.7.1

Installing the Knative Serving component¶

You can install Knative Serving of any specific version under any specific namespace. By default, the namespace is knative-serving, and the version is the latest.

To install the latest version of Knative Serving, run:

kn operator install --component serving

To install Knative Serving under a certain namespace, e.g. knative-serving, run:

kn operator install --component serving -n knative-serving

To install Knative Operator of a specific version, e.g. 1.7, run:

kn operator install --component serving -n knative-serving -v "1.7"

To install the ingress plugin, e.g Kourier, together with the install command, run:

kn operator install --component serving -n knative-serving -v "1.7" --kourier

If you do not specify the ingress plugin, istio is used as the default. However, you need to make sure you install Istio first.

Install the networking layer¶

You can configure the network layer option via the Operator CLI Plugin. Click on each of the following tabs to see how you can configure Knative Serving with different ingresses:

Installing the Knative Eventing component¶

You can install Knative Eventing of any specific version under any specific namespace. By default, the namespace is knative-eventing, and the version is the latest.

To install the latest version of Knative Eventing, run:

kn operator install --component eventing

To install Knative Eventing under a certain namespace, e.g. knative-eventing, run:

kn operator install --component eventing -n knative-eventing

To install Knative Operator of a specific version, e.g. 1.7, run:

kn operator install --component eventing -n knative-eventing -v "1.7"

Installing Knative Eventing with event sources¶

Knative Operator can configure the Knative Eventing component with different event sources. Click on each of the following tabs to see how you can configure Knative Eventing with different event sources:

What's next¶

• Configure Knative Serving using Operator
• Configure Knative Eventing using Operator