Manual Installation
Download a MariaDB Shell release package, verify its checksum, and unpack it without the installation scripts.
Install MariaDB Shell manually when you cannot pipe a script from the internet into a shell, when you deploy to systems without internet access, or when you want to choose the installation directory and the package yourself.
Choose a Package
Each release on the GitHub releases page provides one .tar.gz package per platform and a SHA256SUMS file with the checksum of every package. Package names follow the pattern mariadb-shell-<version>-<platform>-<architecture>.tar.gz. For version 26.9.5, the packages are:
| Package | Platform |
|---|---|
mariadb-shell-26.9.5-linux-glibc2.34-x86-64bit.tar.gz | Linux, x86-64, glibc 2.34 or later |
mariadb-shell-26.9.5-linux-glibc2.34-arm-64bit.tar.gz | Linux, ARM64, glibc 2.34 or later |
mariadb-shell-26.9.5-macos15-x86-64bit.tar.gz | macOS 15 or later, Intel |
mariadb-shell-26.9.5-macos26-arm-64bit.tar.gz | macOS 26 or later, Apple silicon |
mariadb-shell-26.9.5-windows-x86-64bit.tar.gz | Windows, x86-64 |
mariadb-shell-26.9.5-windows-arm-64bit.tar.gz | Windows, ARM64 |
A Linux or macOS package runs on the platform version in its name and on any later version. To check the glibc version of a Linux system, run getconf GNU_LIBC_VERSION.
The release also contains mariadb-<version>-...-sandbox.tar.gz packages and a SERVER_SHA256SUMS file. These are MariaDB Server builds for sandbox instances, not part of MariaDB Shell.
Download and Verify
Download the package for your platform and the SHA256SUMS file into the same directory, then verify the package.
curl -fLO https://github.com/mariadb-corporation/mariadb-shell/releases/download/v26.9.5/mariadb-shell-26.9.5-linux-glibc2.34-x86-64bit.tar.gz
curl -fLO https://github.com/mariadb-corporation/mariadb-shell/releases/download/v26.9.5/SHA256SUMS
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing
The --ignore-missing option makes sha256sum and shasum check only the packages that are present, instead of failing on the packages you didn't download. A correct download reports OK for the package. Don't install a package whose checksum doesn't match.
Unpack the Package
Each package contains a single top-level directory, mariadb-shell-<version>-<platform>-<architecture>, with the following layout:
| Directory | Contents |
|---|---|
bin/ | The mariadb-shell executable, the msh alias (msh.cmd on Windows), and the credential store helpers (mariadb-secret-store-*). On Windows, also the required DLLs. |
lib/ | Private libraries, the bundled Python runtime, and the built-in plugins. On Linux and macOS, client authentication plugins are in lib/mariadb/plugins/. |
share/mariadb-shell/ | Data files, such as the sample prompt themes. |
share/man/man1/ | The mariadb-shell(1) and msh(1) manual pages (Linux and macOS). |
Keep this layout intact: the shell finds its libraries and data files relative to the parent of its bin directory.
The following commands use the same locations as install.sh:
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/mariadb-shell ~/.local/bin
tar -xzf mariadb-shell-26.9.5-linux-glibc2.34-x86-64bit.tar.gz -C ~/.local/share/mariadb-shell
mv ~/.local/share/mariadb-shell/mariadb-shell-26.9.5-linux-glibc2.34-x86-64bit ~/.local/share/mariadb-shell/26.9.5
ln -sfn ~/.local/share/mariadb-shell/26.9.5/bin/mariadb-shell ~/.local/bin/mariadb-shell
ln -sfn ~/.local/share/mariadb-shell/26.9.5/bin/msh ~/.local/bin/msh
Make sure that ~/.local/bin is on your PATH. For a system-wide installation, unpack into a directory such as /opt and create the links in /usr/local/bin instead.
Check the installation:
mariadb-shell --version
Upgrade and Uninstall
To upgrade, unpack the new version next to the old one and point the links (or your PATH) at the new bin directory. Remove old version directories when you no longer need them.
To uninstall, delete the version directories and the links you created. Your configuration directory is separate from the installation; see Files and Environment Variables.