Workstation tools

reference

Workstation tools

Set up the APT repository

Right now we support two package repositories: workstation-tools and device-components.

Workstation tools repo contains:

  • mender-artifact
  • mender-cli

If you want the bleeding edge version of software, you can use our experimental repository by replacing stable with experimental in the above command. Do not use the experimental repository in production as these releases are not fully tested.

As of Mender 3.2.1 we deprecated the previous stable repository and stopped updating it. As of Mender 3.3 we removed it.

With APT repo method, you will always install the latest released Mender components. If you need to install a specific version, or you want to stick to a specific minor release (e.g., to the latest LTS version), you can manually download the Debian packages from the workstation tools repository.

  1. Update the apt package index and install required dependencies.

    sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --assume-yes \
        apt-transport-https \
        ca-certificates \
        curl \
        gnupg \
        jq

  2. Add the official Mender GPG key to your trusted apt keychain:

    curl -fsSL https://downloads.mender.io/repos/debian/gpg | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/mender.asc

    Inspect the GPG key fingerprint and verify that it matches E6C8 5734 5575 F921 8396 5662 2407 2B80 A1B2 9B00.

    gpg --show-keys --with-fingerprint /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/mender.asc
    pub   rsa3072 2020-11-13 [SC] [expires: 2026-10-01]
      E6C8 5734 5575 F921 8396  5662 2407 2B80 A1B2 9B00
uid                      Mender Team <mender@northern.tech>
sub   rsa3072 2020-11-13 [E] [expires: 2026-10-01]

  3. Add the Mender repository to your sources list by selecting the architecture matching your device.

    First, in order to make sure that there are no mender sources in '/etc/apt/sources.list' lingering from a previous install, run

    sudo sed -i.bak -e "\,https://downloads.mender.io/repos/workstation-tools,d" /etc/apt/sources.list

    Then add the sources according to your Linux distribution

    For Raspberry OS, use Debian distributions. To know which version is your device running, do (. /etc/os-release && echo $VERSION_CODENAME)

    echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture)] https://downloads.mender.io/repos/workstation-tools debian/trixie/stable main" \
 | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mender.list

mender-artifact

The mender-artifact utility is used to work with Mender Artifacts, which are files with the .mender suffix and contain software to be deployed. See Artifact creation for more information on how to use this utility.

Install using the APT repository

mender-artifact is available in the APT repository. Follow the steps in Set up the APT repository chapter to enable the repository and install mender-artifact.

Update the package index and install the Mender Artifact:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mender-artifact

Mac OS X

Use brew to install mender-artifact from the Homebrew repository:

brew install mender-artifact

Note that using mender-artifact on MacOS with disk image files (e.g.: *.sdimg, *.img, or others holding the storage partitions) has limited functionality. Commands like mender-artifact cat or mender-artifact cp will not work due to lack of support for certain utilities on the Mac platform.

mender-artifact binary is shipped also in mender-ci-tools Docker image. More information here.

mender-cli

The mender-cli utility enables an easy interface to key use cases of the Mender Server API, such as uploading a Mender Artifact, from the command line. See Server integration for more information.

Install using the APT repository

mender-cli is available in the APT repository. Follow the steps in Set up the APT repository chapter to enable the repository and install mender-cli.

Update the package index and install the Mender CLI:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mender-cli

Mac OS X

Use brew to install mender-cli from the Homebrew repository:

brew install mender-cli

mender-cli binary is shipped also in Docker image. More information here.

We welcome contributions to improve this documentation. To submit a change, use the Edit link at the top of the page or email us at .