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

Article
03/03/2023
7 minutes to read

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 are looking for examples of how to use sqlcmd or bcp, see the links at the end of this article.

Warning

sqlcmd and bcp are available in mssql-tools for x64 architecture. An alternative for both arm64 and x64 environments is in preview across Linux, macOS, and Windows, go-sqlcmd on GitHub.

Install tools on Linux

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

Enter superuser mode.
```
sudo su
```

Download the Microsoft Red Hat repository configuration file.

curl https://packages.microsoft.com/config/rhel/8/prod.repo > /etc/yum.repos.d/msprod.repo

Exit superuser mode.
```
exit
```
If you had a previous version of mssql-tools installed, remove any older unixODBC packages.
```
sudo yum remove mssql-tools unixODBC-utf16-devel
```
Run the following commands to install mssql-tools with the unixODBC developer package.
```
sudo yum install mssql-tools unixODBC-devel
```
Note

To update to the latest version of mssql-tools run the following commands:
```
sudo yum check-update
sudo yum update mssql-tools
```
Optional: Add /opt/mssql-tools/bin/ to your PATH environment variable in a bash shell.

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

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

Add the Microsoft SQL Server repository to Zypper.

sudo zypper addrepo -fc https://packages.microsoft.com/config/sles/12/prod.repo
sudo zypper --gpg-auto-import-keys refresh

Install mssql-tools with the unixODBC developer package.
```
sudo zypper install mssql-tools unixODBC-devel
```
Note

To update to the latest version of mssql-tools run the following commands:
```
sudo zypper refresh
sudo zypper update mssql-tools
```
Optional: Add /opt/mssql-tools/bin/ to your PATH environment variable in a bash shell.

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

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

Note

Ubuntu 18.04 is supported starting with SQL Server 2019 CU3.
Ubuntu 20.04 is supported starting with SQL Server 2019 CU10.
If you are using Ubuntu 16.04 or Ubuntu 18.04, change the repository path in step 2 below from /ubuntu/20.04 to /ubuntu/16.04 or /ubuntu/18.04.

Import the public repository GPG keys.

curl https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | sudo apt-key add -

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

Update the sources list and run the installation command with the unixODBC developer package.
```
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mssql-tools unixodbc-dev
```
Note

To update to the latest version of mssql-tools run the following commands:
```
sudo apt-get update  
sudo apt-get install mssql-tools  
```
Optional: Add /opt/mssql-tools/bin/ to your PATH environment variable in a bash shell.

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

Install tools on macOS

A preview of sqlcmd and bcp is now available on macOS. For more information, see the announcement.

Install Homebrew if you don't have it already:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

To install the tools for Mac El Capitan and Sierra, 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-tools
#for silent install:
#HOMEBREW_NO_ENV_FILTERING=1 ACCEPT_EULA=y brew install mssql-tools

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 are creating a container with the SQL Server command-line tools, it is recommended to 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-tools 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, https://packages.microsoft.com.

Tip

If you successfully installed with the steps in the previous sections, you do not need to download or manually install the following package(s). This is only for the offline scenario.

First, locate and copy the mssql-tools package for your Linux distribution. For Red Hat 8.0, this is located at https://packages.microsoft.com/rhel/8/prod.
Also locate and copy the msodbcsql package, which is a dependency. The msodbcsql package also has a dependency on unixODBC-devel. For Red Hat, the msodbcsql 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-tools and msodbc packages. If you get any dependency errors, ignore them until the next step. Replace <version> with the correct version:
```
sudo yum localinstall msodbcsql-<version>.rpm
sudo yum localinstall mssql-tools-<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 msodbcsql-<version>.rpm
rpm -qpR mssql-tools-<version>.rpm
```

First, locate and copy the mssql-tools package for your Linux distribution. For SLES 12, this is located at https://packages.microsoft.com/sles/12/prod.
Also locate and copy the msodbcsql package, which is a dependency. The msodbcsql package also has a dependency on unixODBC-devel. For SLES, the msodbcsql package is located at https://packages.microsoft.com/sles/12/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-tools and msodbc packages. If you get any dependency errors, ignore them until the next step. Replace <version> with the correct version:
```
sudo zypper install msodbcsql-<version>.rpm
sudo zypper install mssql-tools-<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 msodbcsql-<version>.rpm
rpm -qpR mssql-tools-<version>.rpm
```

First, locate and copy the mssql-tools package for your Linux distribution. For Ubuntu 20.04, this is located at https://packages.microsoft.com/ubuntu/20.04/prod/pool/main/m/mssql-tools |
Also locate and copy the msodbcsql package, which is a dependency. The msodbcsql package also has a dependency on unixodbc-dev. For Ubuntu, the msodbcsql packages are located at msodbcsql, 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-tools and msodbc packages. If you get any dependency errors, ignore them until the next step. Replace <version> with the correct version:
```
sudo dpkg -i msodbcsql_<version>.deb
sudo dpkg -i mssql-tools_<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
```
Note

This command completes the installation of the SQL Server packages as well.

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

Next steps

For an example of how to use sqlcmd to connect to SQL Server and create a database, see one of the following quickstarts:

For an example of how to use bcp to bulk import and export data, see Bulk copy data to SQL Server on Linux.