How to install Helm on Ubuntu

Helm is a popular package manager and deployment tool for Kubernetes, an open-source container orchestration platform. It simplifies installing, configuring, and managing applications on Kubernetes clusters. Helm allows users to define and package Kubernetes resources, including deployments, services, and config maps, as charts. These charts can be versioned, shared, and easily deployed to Kubernetes clusters.

Here are the popular 3-step installation steps walkthrough of helm 3 installation on Ubuntu, with tips and tricks.

Step #1 Download the package

To download helm3, use the following command

curl -fsSL -o get_helm.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3

To verify your download, use the below command:

devops@codetryout:~$ ls -l
total 16
-rw-rw-r-- 1 devops devops 11248 Sep 27 01:24 get_helm.sh

Note: For the current and latest version details, please refer to this page: https://github.com/helm/helm/releases/latest

Step #2 Change required file permission

chmod 700 get_helm.sh

Yes, it is a shell script, which will do the actual installation when executed.

Step #3 Install the package

To run the installer, use the below command:

./get_helm.sh

An alternate way to run all steps in one line

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3 | bash

Complete install screen log:

devops@codetryout:~$ curl -fsSL -o get_helm.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3
devops@codetryout:~$ ls -l
total 16
-rw-rw-r-- 1 devops devops 11248 Sep 27 01:24 get_helm.sh
drwxr-xr-x 3 devops devops  4096 Sep 26 14:43 snap
devops@codetryout:~$
devops@codetryout:~$
devops@codetryout:~$ chmod 700 get_helm.sh
devops@codetryout:~$
devops@codetryout:~$ ./get_helm.sh
Downloading https://get.helm.sh/helm-v3.7.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz
Verifying checksum... Done.
Preparing to install helm into /usr/local/bin
helm installed into /usr/local/bin/helm
devops@codetryout:~$
devops@codetryout:~$

Helm3 installation Screenshot

Checking the helm version

devops@codetryout:~$ helm version
version.BuildInfo{Version:"v3.7.0", GitCommit:"eeac83883cb4014fe60267ec6373570374ce770b", GitTreeState:"clean", GoVersion:"go1.16.8"}

Notes:

We used Helm version 3 and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS for this experiment.

This document is prepared based on the official helm documents: https://helm.sh/docs/intro/install/

FAQs:

Error: Command ‘curl’ not found, but can be installed with

devops@codetryout:~$ curl -fsSL -o get_helm.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3
Command 'curl' not found, but can be installed with:
sudo snap install curl  # version 8.1.2, or
sudo apt  install curl  # version 7.81.0-1ubuntu1.10
See 'snap info curl' for additional versions.

dev@dev-VirtualBox:~$ sudo apt install curl

Solution:

You can install curl using apt.

sudo apt install curl

Kubernetes