sqlcmd: command not found on Ubuntu. How to fix it?

mike

If after installing Sql Server on Ubuntu you can’t run sqlcmd getting “sqlcmd: command not found” error then you need to check some things out.

First of all, make sure that have mssql-tools installed. If you are not sure you can simply try to install it:

sudo apt-get install mssql-tools

and if you already have it installed you will get something like this:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree 
Reading state information... Done
mssql-tools is already the newest version (14.0.3.0-1).
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 242 not to upgrade.

Otherwise, it will be installed on your system. When everything is installed you may still get “sqlcmd: command not found” error when you try to run sqlcmd if you have no proper symlinks created.

First of all, let’s see how this tool is called on your system. It might be called something like sqlcmd-13.0.1.0 or simply sqlcmd but it should be in /opt/mssql-tools/bin/ directory. Let’s see what we have there:

sudo ls /opt/mssql-tools/bin/sqlcmd*

After you get the name of the tool you can create a symlink:

sudo ln -sfn /opt/mssql-tools/bin/sqlcmd /usr/bin/sqlcmd

That’s it.

P.S. Here is a free service to backup SQL Server on Linux.

44 thoughts to “sqlcmd: command not found on Ubuntu. How to fix it?”

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  16. I could not solve the problem, when I trie : sudo apt-get install mssql-tools I had and error: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

    Reply

    1. Hi JOSE MARTINEZ,

      Could you please try to execute the following command:

      sudo dpkg –configure -a

      and then

      sudo apt-get install -f

      Thank you!

      Reply

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