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

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---
layout: "intro"
page_title: "Installing Consul"
sidebar_current: "gettingstarted-install"
---
# Install Consul
Consul must first be installed on every node that will be a member of a
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.
## 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 that below:
```
$ consul
usage: consul [--version] [--help] <command> [<args>]
Available commands are:
agent Runs a Consul agent
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
version Prints the Consul version
```
If you get an error that `consul` could not be found, then your PATH
environmental variable was not setup properly. Please go back and ensure
that your PATH variable contains the directory where Consul was installed.
Otherwise, Consul is installed and ready to go!