Configure calicoctl

Big picture

Learn how to configure the calicoctl CLI tool for your cluster.

Value

The calicoctl CLI tool provides helpful administrative commands for interacting with a Calico Enterprise cluster.

Concepts

Default calicoctl behavior

Most calicoctl commands require access to the Calico Enterprise datastore. By default, calicoctl will attempt to read from the Kubernetes API based on the default kubeconfig.

How to

Configure access using a Configuration file

By default, calicoctl will look for a configuration file at /etc/calico/calicoctl.cfg. You can override this using the --config option with commands that require datastore access. The file can be in either YAML or JSON format. It must be valid and readable by calicoctl. For example:

apiVersion: projectcalico.org/v3
kind: CalicoAPIConfig
metadata:
spec:
  datastoreType: "etcdv3"
  etcdEndpoints: "http://etcd1:2379,http://etcd2:2379"
  ...

Configure access using environment variables

If calicoctl cannot locate, read, or access a configuration file, it will check a specific set of environment variables.

For a full set of options and examples, see Configure calicoctl to connect to the datastore

note

When running calicoctl inside a container, any environment variables and configuration files must be passed to the container so they are available to the process inside. It can be useful to keep a running container (that sleeps) configured for your datastore, then it is possible to exec into the container and have an already configured environment.