Install

Install

mlab is a single Rust binary with no runtime dependencies. macOS and Linux, x86_64 and arm64, from a package manager or as a tarball.

Homebrew (macOS and Linux)

brew tap mlab-sh/mlab-cli https://github.com/mlab-sh/mlab-cli.git
brew install mlab

Debian and Ubuntu

Download the .deb for your architecture from the releases page, then let apt resolve it:

sudo apt install ./mlab_1.0.1_amd64.deb

Fedora, RHEL and rebuilds

The same with the .rpm:

sudo dnf install ./mlab-1.0.1-1.x86_64.rpm

The payload is gzip rather than the zstd default, so rpm 4.14 (RHEL 8 and its rebuilds) reads it too.

Prebuilt binary

Tarballs for every target are on the same page. Each one unpacks to a directory holding the binary, the README and the licence:

tar -xzf mlab-1.0.1-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz
install -m 0755 mlab-1.0.1-aarch64-apple-darwin/mlab ~/.local/bin/

The Linux builds are linked against glibc 2.35, so they run on Debian 12, Ubuntu 22.04 and anything newer.

Checking what you downloaded

Nothing is signed, so every release carries a SHA256SUMS file covering all of its assets — tarballs, .deb and .rpm alike:

sha256sum -c --ignore-missing SHA256SUMS

The Homebrew formula carries the four tarball checksums itself, so brew install verifies them without anyone thinking about it.

From source

git clone https://github.com/mlab-sh/mlab-cli.git
cd mlab-cli
cargo build --release
install -m 0755 target/release/mlab ~/.local/bin/

cargo install --path . works too, and puts the binary in ~/.cargo/bin.

Requirements

Rust	1.74 or later (2021 edition), only to build from source
Network	Outbound HTTPS to mlab.sh, vuln.mlab.sh and actors.mlab.sh
Credential	An API key for the mlab.sh commands; none for CVE or actor lookups

TLS is rustls with the platform trust store, so there is no OpenSSL to install and no system certificate bundle to configure.

First run

mlab login

The prompt asks for the key without echoing it, verifies it against the API before storing anything, and writes $HOME/.mlab/conf.yml with mode 0600. A typo fails there rather than at the next command. Then:

mlab whoami
mlab limits

Non-interactive install

For a script or a CI job, pass the key and skip the prompt:

mlab login --key "$MLAB_KEY"

Or store nothing at all and let the environment carry it, which is what a runner usually wants:

MLAB_API_KEY=... mlab limits

Prefer the environment variable over --api-key: a command line is visible to every other process on the machine. See Authentication.

Shell completions

mlab completions zsh > ~/.zfunc/_mlab
mlab completions bash > /etc/bash_completion.d/mlab
mlab man > /usr/local/share/man/man1/mlab.1

Details on Completions.