open-consul/website/source/intro/getting-started/install.html.markdown

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---
layout: "intro"
page_title: "Installing Consul"
sidebar_current: "gettingstarted-install"
description: |-
Consul must first be installed on every node that will be a member of the Consul cluster. To make installation easy, Consul is distributed as a binary package for all supported platforms and architectures. This page will not cover how to compile Consul from source.
---
# Install Consul
Consul must first be installed on every node that will be a member of the
Consul cluster. To make installation easy, Consul is distributed as a
[binary package](/downloads.html) for all supported platforms and
architectures. This page will not cover how to compile Consul from
source.
## Installing Consul
To install Consul, find the [appropriate package](/downloads.html) for
your system and download it. Consul is packaged as a "zip" archive.
After downloading Consul, unzip the package. Copy the `consul` binary to
somewhere on the `PATH` so that it can be executed. On Unix systems,
`~/bin` and `/usr/local/bin` are common installation directories,
depending on if you want to restrict the install to a single user or
expose it to the entire system. On Windows systems, you can put it
wherever you would like, as long as that location is on the `%PATH%`.
### OS X
If you are using [homebrew](http://brew.sh/#install) as a package manager,
you can install consul with:
```text
$ brew install consul
```
## Verifying the Installation
After installing Consul, verify the installation worked by opening a new
terminal session and checking that `consul` is available. By executing
`consul` you should see help output similar to this:
```text
$ consul
usage: consul [--version] [--help] <command> [<args>]
Available commands are:
agent Runs a Consul agent
event Fire a new event
exec Executes a command on Consul nodes
force-leave Forces a member of the cluster to enter the "left" state
info Provides debugging information for operators
join Tell Consul agent to join cluster
keygen Generates a new encryption key
leave Gracefully leaves the Consul cluster and shuts down
members Lists the members of a Consul cluster
monitor Stream logs from a Consul agent
reload Triggers the agent to reload configuration files
version Prints the Consul version
watch Watch for changes in Consul
```
If you get an error that `consul` could not be found, your `PATH`
environment variable was not set up properly. Please go back and ensure
that your `PATH` variable contains the directory where Consul was
installed.
## Next Steps
Consul is installed and ready for operation. Let's
[run the agent](agent.html)!