---
title: "bash auto-completion on Linux"
description: "Some optional configuration for bash auto-completion on Linux."
headless: true
---

### Introduction

The kubectl completion script for Bash can be generated with the command `kubectl completion bash`. Sourcing the completion script in your shell enables kubectl autocompletion.

However, the completion script depends on [**bash-completion**](https://github.com/scop/bash-completion), which means that you have to install this software first (you can test if you have bash-completion already installed by running `type _init_completion`).

### Install bash-completion

bash-completion is provided by many package managers (see [here](https://github.com/scop/bash-completion#installation)). You can install it with `apt-get install bash-completion` or `yum install bash-completion`, etc.

The above commands create `/usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion`, which is the main script of bash-completion. Depending on your package manager, you have to manually source this file in your `~/.bashrc` file.

To find out, reload your shell and run `type _init_completion`. If the command succeeds, you're already set, otherwise add the following to your `~/.bashrc` file:

```bash
source /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion
```

Reload your shell and verify that bash-completion is correctly installed by typing `type _init_completion`.

### Enable kubectl autocompletion

You now need to ensure that the kubectl completion script gets sourced in all your shell sessions. There are two ways in which you can do this:

- Source the completion script in your `~/.bashrc` file:

   ```bash
   echo 'source <(kubectl completion bash)' >>~/.bashrc
   ```

- Add the completion script to the `/etc/bash_completion.d` directory:

   ```bash
   kubectl completion bash >/etc/bash_completion.d/kubectl
   ```

If you have an alias for kubectl, you can extend shell completion to work with that alias:

```bash
echo 'alias k=kubectl' >>~/.bashrc
echo 'complete -F __start_kubectl k' >>~/.bashrc
```

{{< note >}}
bash-completion sources all completion scripts in `/etc/bash_completion.d`.
{{< /note >}}

Both approaches are equivalent. After reloading your shell, kubectl autocompletion should be working.