Install MongoDB Community Edition on Debian
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Note
MongoDB Atlas
MongoDB Atlas is a hosted MongoDB service option in the cloud which requires no installation overhead and offers a free tier to get started.
Overview
Use this tutorial to install MongoDB 8.0 Community Edition using
the apt package manager.
MongoDB Version
This tutorial installs MongoDB 8.0 Community Edition. To install a different version of MongoDB Community, use the version drop-down menu in the upper-left corner of this page to select the documentation for that version.
Considerations
Platform Support
MongoDB 8.0 Community Edition supports the following 64-bit Debian releases on x86_64 architecture:
Debian 12 "Bookworm"
MongoDB only supports the 64-bit versions of these platforms.
See Platform Support for more information.
Production Notes
Before deploying MongoDB in a production environment, consider the Production Notes for Self-Managed Deployments document which offers performance considerations and configuration recommendations for production MongoDB deployments.
Official MongoDB Packages
To install MongoDB Community on your Debian system, these
instructions will use the official mongodb-org package, which is
maintained and supported by MongoDB Inc. The official mongodb-org
package always contains the latest version of MongoDB, and is available
from its own dedicated repo.
Important
The mongodb package provided by Debian is not
maintained by MongoDB Inc. and conflicts with the official
mongodb-org package. If you have already installed the mongodb
package on your Debian system, you must first uninstall
the mongodb package before proceeding with these instructions.
See MongoDB Community Edition Packages for the complete list of official packages.
Install MongoDB Community Edition
Follow these steps to install MongoDB Community Edition using the
apt package manager.
From a terminal, install gnupg and curl if they are not already
available:
sudo apt-get install gnupg curl
To import the MongoDB public GPG key, run the following command:
curl -fsSL https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-8.0.asc | \ sudo gpg -o /usr/share/keyrings/mongodb-server-8.0.gpg \ --dearmor
Create a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-8.0.list file for MongoDB.
Create the list file using the command appropriate for your version of Debian:
echo "deb [ signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/mongodb-server-8.0.gpg ] http://repo.mongodb.org/apt/debian bookworm/mongodb-org/8.0 main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-8.0.list
Install MongoDB Community Server
You can install either the latest stable version of MongoDB or a specific version of MongoDB.
To install the latest stable version, issue the following
sudo apt-get install -y mongodb-org
To install a specific release, you must specify each component package individually along with the version number, as in the following example:
sudo apt-get install -y mongodb-org=8.0.0 mongodb-org-database=8.0.0 mongodb-org-server=8.0.0 mongodb-mongosh mongodb-org-mongos=8.0.0 mongodb-org-tools=8.0.0
If you only install mongodb-org=8.0.0 and do not include the
component packages, the latest version of each MongoDB package will be
installed regardless of what version you specified.
Optional. Although you can specify any available version of MongoDB,
apt-get will upgrade the packages when a newer version becomes
available. To prevent unintended upgrades, you can pin the package
at the currently installed version:
echo "mongodb-org hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections echo "mongodb-org-database hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections echo "mongodb-org-server hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections echo "mongodb-mongosh hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections echo "mongodb-org-mongos hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections echo "mongodb-org-tools hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
Run MongoDB Community Edition
ulimit Considerations
Most Unix-like operating systems limit the system resources that a
process may use. These limits may negatively impact MongoDB operation,
and should be adjusted. See UNIX ulimit Settings for Self-Managed Deployments for the recommended
settings for your platform.
Note
If the ulimit value for number of open files is under 64000, MongoDB
generates a startup warning.
Directories
By default, a MongoDB instance stores:
its data files in
/var/lib/mongodbits log files in
/var/log/mongodb
If you installed via the package manager, these default directories are created during the installation.
If you installed manually by downloading the tarballs, you can create
the directories using mkdir -p <directory> or sudo mkdir -p
<directory> depending on the user that will run MongoDB. (See your
linux man pages for information on mkdir and sudo.)
By default, MongoDB runs using the mongodb user account. If you
change the user that runs the MongoDB process, you must also modify
the permission to the /var/lib/mongodb and /var/log/mongodb
directories to give this user access to these directories.
To specify a different log file directory and data file directory, edit
the systemLog.path and storage.dbPath settings in
the /etc/mongod.conf. Ensure that the user running MongoDB has
access to these directories.
Procedure
Follow these steps to run MongoDB Community Edition on your system.
These instructions assume that you are using the official mongodb-org
package -- not the unofficial mongodb package provided by
Debian -- and are using the default settings.
Init System
To run and manage your mongod process, you will be using
your operating system's built-in init system. Recent versions of
Linux tend to use systemd (which uses the systemctl command),
while older versions of Linux tend to use System V init (which uses
the service command).
If you are unsure which init system your platform uses, run the following command:
ps --no-headers -o comm 1
Then select the appropriate tab below based on the result:
systemd- select the systemd (systemctl) tab below.init- select the System V Init (service) tab below.
Start MongoDB.
You can start the mongod process by issuing the
following command:
sudo systemctl start mongod
If you receive an error similar to the following when starting
mongod:
Failed to start mongod.service: Unit mongod.service not found.
Run the following command first:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
Then run the start command above again.
Stop MongoDB.
As needed, you can stop the mongod process by issuing the
following command:
sudo systemctl stop mongod
Restart MongoDB.
You can restart the mongod process by issuing the following
command:
sudo systemctl restart mongod
You can follow the state of the process for errors or important messages
by watching the output in the /var/log/mongodb/mongod.log file.
Begin using MongoDB.
Start a mongosh session on the same host machine as the
mongod. You can run mongosh
without any command-line options to connect to a
mongod that is running on your localhost with default
port 27017.
mongosh
For more information on connecting using mongosh,
such as to connect to a mongod instance running
on a different host and/or port, see the
mongosh documentation.
To help you start using MongoDB, MongoDB provides Getting Started Guides in various driver editions. For the driver documentation, see Start Developing with MongoDB.
Start MongoDB.
Issue the following command to start mongod:
sudo service mongod start
Verify that MongoDB has started successfully
Verify that the mongod process has started
successfully:
sudo service mongod status
You can also check the log file for the current status of the
mongod process, located at:
/var/log/mongodb/mongod.log by default. A running
mongod instance will indicate that it is ready for
connections with the following line:
[initandlisten] waiting for connections on port 27017
Stop MongoDB.
As needed, you can stop the mongod process by issuing the
following command:
sudo service mongod stop
Restart MongoDB.
Issue the following command to restart mongod:
sudo service mongod restart
Begin using MongoDB.
Start a mongosh session on the same host machine as the
mongod. You can run mongosh
without any command-line options to connect to a
mongod that is running on your localhost with default
port 27017.
mongosh
For more information on connecting using mongosh,
such as to connect to a mongod instance running
on a different host and/or port, see the
mongosh documentation.
To help you start using MongoDB, MongoDB provides Getting Started Guides in various driver editions. For the driver documentation, see Start Developing with MongoDB.
Uninstall MongoDB Community Edition
To completely remove MongoDB from a system, you must remove the MongoDB applications themselves, the configuration files, and any directories containing data and logs. The following section guides you through the necessary steps.
Warning
This process will completely remove MongoDB, its configuration, and all databases. This process is not reversible, so ensure that all of your configuration and data is backed up before proceeding.
Stop MongoDB.
Stop the mongod process by issuing the following command:
sudo service mongod stop
Additional Information
Localhost Binding by Default
By default, MongoDB launches with bindIp set to
127.0.0.1, which binds to the localhost network interface. This
means that the mongod can only accept connections from
clients that are running on the same machine. Remote clients will not be
able to connect to the mongod, and the mongod will
not be able to initialize a replica set unless this value is set
to a valid network interface.
This value can be configured either:
Warning
Before you bind your instance to a publicly-accessible IP address, you must secure your cluster from unauthorized access. For a complete list of security recommendations, see Security Checklist for Self-Managed Deployments. At minimum, consider enabling authentication and hardening network infrastructure.
For more information on configuring bindIp, see
IP Binding in Self-Managed Deployments.
MongoDB Community Edition Packages
MongoDB Community Edition is available from its own dedicated repository, and contains the following officially-supported packages:
Package Name | Description | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
mongodb-org | A metapackage that automatically installs the component
packages listed below. | ||||||
mongodb-org-database | A
| ||||||
mongodb-mongosh | Contains the MongoDB Shell ( mongosh). | ||||||
mongodb-org-tools | A
|