kubectl is not installed on GCE by default

Question

Following the guide I'm trying to manage Google Container Engine cluster from another machine on Google Compute Engine. Here is the output from my GCE instance:

oleksandr_berezianskyi_gmail_com@docker-managed-jenkins:~$ sudo gcloud components update preview
All components are up to date.
oleksandr_berezianskyi_gmail_com@docker-managed-jenkins:~$ sudo gcloud components update alpha
All components are up to date.
oleksandr_berezianskyi_gmail_com@docker-managed-jenkins:~$ gcloud alpha container kubectl create -f cassandra.yaml
ERROR: (gcloud.alpha.container.kubectl) This command requires the kubernetes client (kubectl), which is installed with the gcloud preview component. Run 'gcloud components update preview', or make sure kubectl is installed somewhere on your
 path.

As you see my Google Cloud SDK seems to be up-to-date but still not working properly on GCE. Is there something I'm missing?

Answer 1

The correct way to install kubectl is now gcloud components install kubectl

• You must have the Google Cloud SDK installed
• For further information, Quick Start Guide

Answer 2

If you have run gcloud components update that will install the kubectl binary on your system, it just won't be in your path. It will be located in the cloud-sdk install directory. You can add it to your path manually by running

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/share/google/google-cloud-sdk/bin/

or you can create a symlink from a directory that is already in your path, like /usr/local/bin by running

sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/google/google-cloud-sdk/bin/kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl

Answer 3

You can download the current version of the kubectl binary from this Google Cloud Storage URL: https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/v0.18.2/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl