If Kong is running on docker, refer to Kong - Docker container command line for the steps on how to issue commands in the Kong Docker container.

Use the ps command to determine if Kong is running. If there are Kong processes, like this, Kong is running.

ps -ef | grep -i kong
. . .
    1 kong      0:00 nginx: master process /usr/local/openresty/nginx/sbin/nginx -p /usr/local/kong -c nginx.conf
   22 kong     48:05 nginx: worker process
   23 kong      2:12 nginx: worker process
   24 kong      2:06 nginx: worker process
   25 kong     14:27 nginx: worker process
   50 kong      0:00 sh
   66 kong      0:00 ps -ef
   67 kong      0:00 grep -i kong

Use the kong version command to return the version of Kong. In this example, the version of Kong is 2.0.1.

kong version
. . .
2.0.1

If you have more than one version of Kong installed, use the -c option following by the path to the kong.conf file.

kong version -c /path/to/kong.conf
. . .
2.0.1