smallstep_full_white

Install step

It's trivial to install the step binary on your local machine.

Select your operating system or infrastructure:

macOS

Install step via Homebrew:

brew install step

To uninstall, run brew uninstall step and remove the $HOME/.step configuration directory.

Linux Packages (amd64)

Debian/Ubuntu

Download and install the Debian package from our latest release:

wget https://dl.smallstep.com/cli/docs-cli-install/latest/step-cli_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i step-cli_amd64.deb

To uninstall, run sudo dpkg -r step-cli and remove the $HOME/.step configuration directory.

Arch Linux

There is a community-maintained step-cli package.

Use pacman to install step:

sudo pacman -S step-cli

The Arch package installs step as step-cli. Add a symlink to address this:

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/step-cli /usr/local/bin/step

To uninstall, run sudo pacman -R step-cli and remove the $HOME/.step configuration directory.

Big shout out to the maintainers of these packages! We appreciate you.

RedHat

Download and install the RPM package from our latest release:

wget https://dl.smallstep.com/cli/docs-cli-install/latest/step-cli_amd64.rpm
sudo rpm -i step-cli_amd64.rpm

To uninstall, run sudo dnf remove step-cli and remove the $HOME/.step configuration directory.

Wolfi

Wolfi has a maintained step package.

Use apk to install step:

apk add step

To uninstall, run apk del step and remove the $HOME/.step configuration directory.

Alpine Linux

There is a community-maintained step-cli package for Alpine Linux.

Use apk to install step:

apk add step-cli

To uninstall, run apk del step-cli and remove the $HOME/.step configuration directory.

Big shout out to the maintainers of these packages! We appreciate you.

NixOS

Install the step-cli package on NixOS.

FreeBSD

Install the step-cli package on FreeBSD.

Linux Binaries

We have 386, amd64, arm64, armv7, mips, and mips64 releases available to download from our latest release.

Place the binary in /usr/bin for compatibility with the rest of our documentation.

Binary Signature Verification

We use cosign for signing and verifying release artifacts. To verify the signature of the step-ca binary:

  1. Install cosign

  2. Download the binary signature (.sig) and certificate (.pem) files from the Assets section of our GitHub Releases page

  3. Run:

    cosign verify-blob \
  --certificate step_linux_amd64.tar.gz.pem \
  --signature step_linux_amd64.tar.gz.sig \
  --certificate-identity-regexp "https://github\.com/smallstep/workflows/.*" \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com \
  step_linux_amd64.tar.gz

Windows

Install via Winget

Install step via Winget:

winget install Smallstep.step

After installing, you may need to restart your terminal for step to be in your path.

To uninstall, run winget uninstall Smallstep.step and remove the $HOME/.step configuration directory.

Install via Scoop

Install step via scoop:

scoop bucket add smallstep https://github.com/smallstep/scoop-bucket.git
scoop install smallstep/step

To uninstall, run scoop remove step and remove the $HOME/.step configuration directory.

Install manually

Download the Windows binary from our latest releases page and install it using PowerShell.

Open PowerShell and run the following:

curl.exe -LO https://dl.smallstep.com/cli/docs-cli-install/latest/step_windows_amd64.zip
Expand-Archive -LiteralPath .\step_windows_amd64.zip -DestinationPath .
step_windows_amd64\bin\step.exe version

Finally, move the step.exe binary wherever you'd like it to into a location in your user's PATH.

Testing your installation

$ step certificate inspect https://smallstep.com
Certificate:
    Data:
        Version: 3 (0x2)
        Serial Number: 326381749415081530968054238478851085504954 (0x3bf265673332db2d0c70e48a163fb7d11ba)
    Signature Algorithm: SHA256-RSA
        Issuer: C=US,O=Let's Encrypt,CN=Let's Encrypt Authority X3
        Validity
            Not Before: Feb 8 13:07:44 2019 UTC
            Not After : May 9 13:07:44 2019 UTC
        Subject: CN=smallstep.com
[...]