How to Install etcd on Ubuntu 18.04 / Ubuntu 16.04

Etcd is a simple, reliable, fast and secure open source key-value store written in Go. It uses the Raft consensus algorithm to manage a highly-available replicated log. In this guide, we will install a single node (one member) etcd on Ubuntu 18.04 / Ubuntu 16.04.

Note: This is a single node cluster setup, for three node cluster, refer to the guide below.

Setup Etcd Cluster on Ubuntu/Debian/CentOS

Install etcd on Ubuntu 18.04 / Ubuntu 16.04

Etcd is distributed as a binary package though you can build it from source. In this guide, we’re going to download a pre-built binary package.

Check the pre-built release binaries before you proceed to get the latest release tag.

Download the latest release of etcd on Ubuntu 18.04 / Ubuntu 16.04:

sudo apt -y install wget
export RELEASE="3.3.13"
wget https://github.com/etcd-io/etcd/releases/download/v${RELEASE}/etcd-v${RELEASE}-linux-amd64.tar.gz

Extract downloaded archive file.

tar xvf etcd-v${RELEASE}-linux-amd64.tar.gz

Change to new file directory

cd etcd-v${RELEASE}-linux-amd64

Move etcd and etcdctl binary files to /usr/local/bin directory.

sudo mv etcd etcdctl /usr/local/bin 

Confirm version.

$ etcd --version
 etcd Version: 3.3.13
 Git SHA: 98d3084
 Go Version: go1.10.8
 Go OS/Arch: linux/amd64

Create Etcd configuration file and data directory.

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/etcd/
sudo mkdir /etc/etcd

Create etcd system user

sudo groupadd --system etcd
sudo useradd -s /sbin/nologin --system -g etcd etcd

Set /var/lib/etcd/ directory ownership to etcd user.

sudo chown -R etcd:etcd /var/lib/etcd/

Configure Systemd and start etcd service

Create a new systemd service file for etcd.

 sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/etcd.service

Paste below data into the file.

[Unit]
Description=etcd key-value store
Documentation=https://github.com/etcd-io/etcd
After=network.target

[Service]
User=etcd
Type=notify
Environment=ETCD_DATA_DIR=/var/lib/etcd
Environment=ETCD_NAME=%m
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/etcd
Restart=always
RestartSec=10s
LimitNOFILE=40000

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Reload systemd service and start etcd on Ubuntu 18,04 / Ubuntu 16,04

sudo systemctl  daemon-reload
sudo systemctl  start etcd.service

Check service status:

$ sudo systemctl  status etcd.service
 ● etcd.service - etcd key-value store
    Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/etcd.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
    Active: active (running) since Sat 2019-01-05 00:54:20 EAT; 23s ago
      Docs: https://github.com/etcd-io/etcd
  Main PID: 8792 (etcd)
     Tasks: 13 (limit: 4915)
    CGroup: /system.slice/etcd.service
            └─8792 /usr/local/bin/etcd
 Ama 05 00:54:20 mynix etcd[8792]: 8e9e05c52164694d received MsgVoteResp from 8e9e05c52164694d at term 2
 Ama 05 00:54:20 mynix etcd[8792]: 8e9e05c52164694d became leader at term 2
 Ama 05 00:54:20 mynix etcd[8792]: raft.node: 8e9e05c52164694d elected leader 8e9e05c52164694d at term 2
 Ama 05 00:54:20 mynix etcd[8792]: setting up the initial cluster version to 3.3
 Ama 05 00:54:20 mynix etcd[8792]: set the initial cluster version to 3.3
 Ama 05 00:54:20 mynix etcd[8792]: enabled capabilities for version 3.3
 Ama 05 00:54:20 mynix etcd[8792]: ready to serve client requests
 Ama 05 00:54:20 mynix etcd[8792]: published {Name:5fbf3d068d6c491eb687a7a427fc2263 ClientURLs:[http://localhost:2379]} to cluster cdf818194e3a8c32
 Ama 05 00:54:20 mynix systemd[1]: Started etcd key-value store.
 Ama 05 00:54:20 mynix etcd[8792]: serving insecure client requests on 127.0.0.1:2379, this is strongly discouraged!

The service will start on localhost address port 2379

$ ss -tunelp | grep 2379
 tcp   LISTEN 0 128 127.0.0.1:2379 0.0.0.0:*  uid:998 ino:72981 sk:45c <-> 

$ etcdctl member list
 8e9e05c52164694d: name=5fbf3d068d6c491eb687a7a427fc2263 peerURLs=http://localhost:2380 clientURLs=http://localhost:2379 isLeader=true

In our next tutorial, I’ll cover setting up Etcd cluster on Ubuntu 18.04 / Ubuntu 16.04.

Related: How to Install etcd on RHEL / CentOS 8