Install Kong Gateway on Debian

The Kong Gateway software is governed by the Kong Software License Agreement. Kong Gateway (OSS) 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.
• The following tools are installed:
  • curl
  • lsb-release
  • apt-transport-https (Only if installing the APT repository)
• (Enterprise only) A license.json file from Kong.

Notes:

• Kong Gateway supports running on AWS Graviton processors. It can run in all AWS Regions where AWS Graviton is supported.
• In July of 2023, Kong announced that package hosting was shifting from download.konghq.com to https://cloudsmith.io/~kong/repos. Read more about it in this blog post!

Package install

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

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

Package

APT repository

Install Kong Gateway on Debian from the command line.

1. Download the Kong package:

   Kong Gateway

   Kong Gateway (OSS)

   curl -Lo kong-enterprise-edition-3.8.0.0.deb "https://packages.konghq.com/public/gateway-38/deb/debian/pool/bullseye/main/k/ko/kong-enterprise-edition_3.8.0.0/kong-enterprise-edition_3.8.0.0_$(dpkg --print-architecture).deb"

   curl -Lo kong-3.8.0.deb "https://packages.konghq.com/public/gateway-38/deb/debian/pool/bullseye/main/k/ko/kong_3.8.0/kong_3.8.0_$(dpkg --print-architecture).deb"

2. Install the package:

   Kong Gateway

   Kong Gateway (OSS)

   sudo apt install -y ./kong-enterprise-edition-3.8.0.0.deb

   sudo apt install -y ./kong-3.8.0.deb

Install the APT repository from the command line.

1. Download the Kong APT repository:

    curl -1sLf "https://packages.konghq.com/public/gateway-38/gpg.8F87A07D181DAA6B.key" |  gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/kong-gateway-38-archive-keyring.gpg > /dev/null
    curl -1sLf "https://packages.konghq.com/public/gateway-38/config.deb.txt?distro=debian&codename=$(lsb_release -sc)" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kong-gateway-38.list > /dev/null

2. Update the repository:

    sudo apt-get update

3. Install Kong:

   Kong Gateway

   Kong Gateway (OSS)

   sudo apt install -y kong-enterprise-edition=3.8.0.0

   sudo apt install -y kong=3.8.0

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:

• Optional: Add your 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

Stop Kong Gateway:

kong stop

Kong Gateway

Kong Gateway (OSS)

To uninstall the package, run:

sudo apt remove kong-enterprise-edition

To uninstall the package, run:

sudo apt remove kong