Command Line Tools

Capella Operational

March 23, 2025

+ 12

Use Couchbase command line tools to import and export large amounts of data, and manage ad hoc backups.

Couchbase Server includes a suite of command line tools, available as a separate package for Couchbase Capella. Couchbase command line tools for Capella include cbimport and cb export, cbbackupmgr, cbdatarecovery and cbq.

Download and Install the Couchbase Command Line Tools

Download the version of the command line tools package for your platform through the following links:

Linux: 7.6.x 7.2.x 7.1.x
Linux aarch64: 7.6.x 7.1.x
macOS: 7.6.x 7.2.x 7.1.x
macOS arm64: 7.6.x 7.2.x
Windows: 7.6.x 7.2.x 7.1.x

Unzip or untar the packages, and the binaries are ready to run. The zipped package also contains a README file, and a copy of the software licenses.

For example, for Linux x86_64:

console
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$ mkdir capella_server_tools_7.6.3

console
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$ cd capella_server_tools_7.6.3

console
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$ wget https://packages.couchbase.com/releases/7.6.3/couchbase-server-tools_7.6.3-linux_x86_64.tar.gz

console
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$ tar -xf couchbase-server-tools_7.6.3-linux_x86_64.tar.gz

console
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$ ls -1
bin
couchbase-server-tools_7.6.3-linux_x86_64.tar.gz
lib
LICENSE.txt
NOTICES.txt
README.txt
share

console
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$ cd bin

console
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$ ls -1
cbbackupmgr
cbdatarecovery
cbexport
cbimport
cbq

console
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$ ./cbimport --version
cbimport version 7.6.3-4200 (192d7500)

console
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$ ./cbexport --version
cbexport version 7.6.3-4200 (192d7500)

console
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$ ./cbbackupmgr --version
cbbackupmgr version 7.6.3-4200 (192d7500)

console
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$ ./cbdatarecovery --version
cbdatarecovery version 7.6.3-4200 (192d7500)

console
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$ ./cbq --version
 GO VERSION : go1.22.2
 SHELL VERSION : 7.6.3-4200

 Use N1QL queries select version(); or select min_version(); to display server version.

On Windows, you will need to have a recent Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable already installed. Download the latest Visual C++ Redistributable from Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable latest supported downloads.

Apple M1 Silicon

The MacOS x86 binaries can be used on Apple Silicon Macs with Rosetta installed. If your Apple Silicon Mac does not already have Rosetta installed, you can install from the command line, using:

console
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softwareupdate --install-rosetta

Other CLI Tools

The Couchbase C SDK, libcouchbase, also includes some command line tools. For more information about these command line tools, see cbc Tools.

Couchbase Shell (cbsh)

The new Couchbase shell, or REPL, to interact with Couchbase Capella is now in public beta.

Use cbsh to:

Extract, transform, and load different data formats.
Export data as JSON or CSV.
Import data from SQLite.

Use cbsh through development and production, for generating data and checking the status of your indexes.

For documentation on the Beta release, and more examples, see the Couchbase Shell Documentation.

IDE Plugins

For more information about IDE plugins, see the Third Party Integrations page.

Next Steps

To start using the command line tools, you must do the following:

Copy the connection string for your cluster.
Configure cluster access by creating cluster access credentials. You’ll need the username and password for the cluster credentials to connect to the cluster.
Add your IP address to the cluster’s list of allowed IPs.
Downloaded the security certificate for your cluster.

You can do all of this from a single location using the Connect page in the Capella UI. See Connect To Your Cluster and follow the instructions for the CLI tools.