Install the SQL Server command-line tools sqlcmd and bcp on Linux

Article
07/22/2024

Applies to: SQL Server - Linux

The following steps install the command-line tools, Microsoft ODBC drivers, and their dependencies. The mssql-tools package contains:

sqlcmd: Command-line query utility.
bcp: Bulk import-export utility.

Install the tools for your platform:

This article describes how to install the command-line tools. If you're looking for examples of how to use sqlcmd or bcp, see the Related content at the end of this article.

Important

sqlcmd and bcp are available in mssql-tools18 for x64 and arm64 architectures. For a modern alternative across Linux, macOS, and Windows, see go-sqlcmd utility.

Install tools on Linux

These instructions are for installing the Microsoft ODBC 18 packages. For previous versions, see Install the Microsoft ODBC driver for SQL Server (Linux).

Use the following steps to install the mssql-tools18 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Download the Microsoft Red Hat repository configuration file.

For Red Hat 9, use the following command:

curl https://packages.microsoft.com/config/rhel/9/prod.repo | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/mssql-release.repo

For Red Hat 8, use the following command:

curl https://packages.microsoft.com/config/rhel/8/prod.repo | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/mssql-release.repo

For Red Hat 7, use the following command:

curl https://packages.microsoft.com/config/rhel/7/prod.repo | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/mssql-release.repo

If you had a previous version of mssql-tools installed, remove any older unixODBC packages.
```
sudo yum remove mssql-tools unixODBC-utf16 unixODBC-utf16-devel
```
Run the following commands to install mssql-tools18 with the unixODBC developer package.
```
sudo yum install -y mssql-tools18 unixODBC-devel
```
To update to the latest version of mssql-tools, run the following commands:
```
sudo yum check-update
sudo yum update mssql-tools18
```
Optional: Add /opt/mssql-tools18/bin/ to your PATH environment variable in a bash shell.

To make sqlcmd and bcp accessible from the bash shell for login sessions, modify your PATH in the ~/.bash_profile file with the following command:
```
echo 'export PATH="$PATH:/opt/mssql-tools18/bin"' >> ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile
```
To make sqlcmd and bcp accessible from the bash shell for interactive/non-login sessions, modify the PATH in the ~/.bashrc file with the following command:
```
echo 'export PATH="$PATH:/opt/mssql-tools18/bin"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
```

Use the following steps to install the mssql-tools18 on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

Import the Microsoft package signing key.

curl -O https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc
sudo rpm --import microsoft.asc

Add the SQL Server repository to Zypper.

For SLES 15, use the following command:

sudo zypper ar https://packages.microsoft.com/config/sles/15/prod.repo

For SLES 12, use the following command:

sudo zypper ar https://packages.microsoft.com/config/sles/12/prod.repo

Install mssql-tools18 with the unixODBC developer package.
- For SLES 15, use the following command:
```
sudo zypper install -y mssql-tools18 unixODBC-devel glibc-locale-base
```
- For SLES 12, use the following command:
```
sudo zypper install -y mssql-tools18 unixODBC-devel
```
To update to the latest version of mssql-tools18, run the following commands:
```
sudo zypper refresh
sudo zypper update mssql-tools18
```
Optional: Add /opt/mssql-tools18/bin/ to your PATH environment variable in a bash shell.

To make sqlcmd and bcp accessible from the bash shell for login sessions, modify your PATH in the ~/.bash_profile file with the following command:
```
echo 'export PATH="$PATH:/opt/mssql-tools18/bin"' >> ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile
```
To make sqlcmd or bcp accessible from the bash shell for interactive/non-login sessions, modify the PATH in the ~/.bashrc file with the following command:
```
echo 'export PATH="$PATH:/opt/mssql-tools18/bin"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
```

Use the following steps to install the mssql-tools18 on Ubuntu.

Note

Ubuntu 18.04 is supported starting with SQL Server 2019 (15.x) CU 3.
Ubuntu 20.04 is supported starting with SQL Server 2019 (15.x) CU 10.

Import the public repository GPG keys.

curl https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/microsoft.asc

For Ubuntu 22.04, use the following command:

curl https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/22.04/prod.list | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mssql-release.list

For Ubuntu 20.04, use the following command:

curl https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/20.04/prod.list | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mssql-release.list

For Ubuntu 18.04, use the following command:

curl https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/18.04/prod.list | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mssql-release.list

For Ubuntu 16.04, use the following command:

curl https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/16.04/prod.list | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mssql-release.list

Update the sources list and run the installation command with the unixODBC developer package.
```
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mssql-tools18 unixodbc-dev
```
To update to the latest version of mssql-tools, run the following commands:
```
sudo apt-get update  
sudo apt-get install mssql-tools18
```
Optional: Add /opt/mssql-tools18/bin/ to your PATH environment variable in a bash shell.

To make sqlcmd and bcp accessible from the bash shell for login sessions, modify your PATH in the ~/.bash_profile file with the following command:
```
echo 'export PATH="$PATH:/opt/mssql-tools18/bin"' >> ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile
```
To make sqlcmd and bcp accessible from the bash shell for interactive/non-login sessions, modify the PATH in the ~/.bashrc file with the following command:
```
echo 'export PATH="$PATH:/opt/mssql-tools18/bin"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
```

Install tools on macOS

Install Homebrew if you don't have it already:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

To install the tools for macOS El Capitan and later versions, use the following commands:

# brew untap microsoft/mssql-preview if you installed the preview version
brew tap microsoft/mssql-release https://github.com/Microsoft/homebrew-mssql-release
brew update
brew install mssql-tools18

Install tools on Docker

If you run SQL Server in a Docker container, the SQL Server command-line tools are already included in the SQL Server Linux container image. If you attach to a running container with an interactive bash shell, you can run the tools locally.

If you're creating a container with the SQL Server command-line tools, you should add ACCEPT_EULA=Y to the installation command to silently accept the EULA, and not interrupt image creation. An example final command as part of installation on an Ubuntu-based image is:

sudo ACCEPT_EULA=Y apt-get install mssql-tools18 unixodbc-dev

Offline installation

If your Linux machine doesn't have access to the online repositories used in the previous sections, you can download the package files directly. These packages are located in the Microsoft repository at https://packages.microsoft.com.

Tip

If you successfully installed with the steps in the previous sections, you don't need to download or manually install the following packages. This is only for the offline scenario.

First, locate and copy the mssql-tools18 package for your Linux distribution. For Red Hat 8.0, this package is located at https://packages.microsoft.com/rhel/8/prod.
Also locate and copy the msodbcsql18 package, which is a dependency. The msodbcsql18 package also has a dependency on unixODBC-devel. For Red Hat, the msodbcsql18 package is located at https://packages.microsoft.com/rhel/8/prod.
Move the downloaded packages to your Linux machine. If you used a different machine to download the packages, one way to move the packages to your Linux machine is with the scp command.
Install the and packages: Install the mssql-tools18 and msodbc18 packages. If you get any dependency errors, ignore them until the next step. Replace <version> with the correct version:
```
sudo yum localinstall msodbcsql18-<version>.rpm
sudo yum localinstall mssql-tools18-<version>.rpm
```
Resolve missing dependencies: You might have missing dependencies at this point. If not, you can skip this step. In some cases, you must manually locate and install these dependencies.

You can inspect the required dependencies with the following commands. Replace <version> with the correct version:
```
rpm -qpR msodbcsql18-<version>.rpm
rpm -qpR mssql-tools18-<version>.rpm
```

First, locate and copy the mssql-tools18 package for your Linux distribution. For SLES 15, this package is located at https://packages.microsoft.com/sles/15/prod.
Also locate and copy the msodbcsql18 package, which is a dependency. The msodbcsql18 package also has a dependency on unixODBC-devel. For SLES, the msodbcsql18 package is located at https://packages.microsoft.com/sles/15/prod.
Move the downloaded packages to your Linux machine. If you used a different machine to download the packages, one way to move the packages to your Linux machine is with the scp command.
Install the and packages: Install the mssql-tools18 and msodbc18 packages. If you get any dependency errors, ignore them until the next step. Replace <version> with the correct version:
```
sudo zypper install msodbcsql18-<version>.rpm
sudo zypper install mssql-tools18-<version>.rpm
```
Resolve missing dependencies: You might have missing dependencies at this point. If not, you can skip this step. In some cases, you must manually locate and install these dependencies.

You can inspect the required dependencies with the following commands. Replace <version> with the correct version:
```
rpm -qpR msodbcsql18-<version>.rpm
rpm -qpR mssql-tools18-<version>.rpm
```

First, locate and copy the mssql-tools18 package for your Linux distribution. For Ubuntu 20.04, this package is located at https://packages.microsoft.com/ubuntu/20.04/prod/pool/main/m/mssql-tools.
Also locate and copy the msodbcsql18 package, which is a dependency. The msodbcsql18 package also has a dependency on unixodbc-dev. For Ubuntu, the msodbcsql18 packages are located at msodbcsql18, and unixodbc-dev.
Move the downloaded packages to your Linux machine. If you used a different machine to download the packages, one way to move the packages to your Linux machine is with the scp command.
Install the and packages: Install the mssql-tools18 and msodbc18 packages. If you get any dependency errors, ignore them until the next step. Replace <version> with the correct version:
```
sudo dpkg -i msodbcsql18_<version>.deb
sudo dpkg -i mssql-tools18_<version>.deb
```
Resolve missing dependencies: You might have missing dependencies at this point. If not, you can skip this step. In some cases, you must manually locate and install these dependencies.

If you have access to approved repositories containing those dependencies, the easiest solution is to use the apt-get command:
```
sudo apt-get -f install
```
This command completes the installation of the SQL Server packages as well.

If this step doesn't work for your Debian package, you can inspect the required dependencies with the following commands:
```
dpkg -I msodbcsql18_<version>_amd64.deb | grep "Depends:"
dpkg -I mssql-tools18_<version>_amd64.deb | grep "Depends:"
```

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For more information, see How to contribute to SQL Server documentation

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