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Install MongoDB Community on Amazon Linux using .tgz Tarball

On this page

  • Overview
  • Considerations
  • Install MongoDB Community Edition
  • Run MongoDB Community Edition
  • Additional Information

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.

Use this tutorial to manually install MongoDB 5.0 Community Edition on Amazon Linux using a downloaded .tgz tarball.

You can verify which Linux distribution you are running by running the following command on the command-line:

grep ^NAME /etc/*release

The result should be Amazon Linux or Amazon Linux AMI. If using a different Linux distribution, please see the install instructions for your platform.

This tutorial installs MongoDB 5.0 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.

While MongoDB can be installed manually via a downloaded .tgz tarball as described in this document, it is recommended to use the yum package manager on your system to install MongoDB if possible. Using a package manager automatically installs all needed dependencies, provides an example mongod.conf file to get you started, and simplifies future upgrade and maintenance tasks.

See Install MongoDB using the yum Package Manager for instructions.

When you use the .tgz package to install the server, you need to follow the mongosh installation instructions to download and install mongosh separately.

MongoDB 5.0 Community Edition supports the following 64-bit Amazon Linux release on x86_64 architecture:

  • Amazon Linux 2

MongoDB only supports the 64-bit versions of this platform.

MongoDB 5.0 Community Edition on Amazon Linux also supports the ARM64 architecture on select platforms.

See Platform Support for more information.

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.

Use the following command to install the dependencies required for the MongoDB Community .tgz tarball:

sudo yum install libcurl openssl xz-libs

Follow these steps to manually install MongoDB Community Edition from the .tgz.

1

After you have installed the required prerequisite packages, download the MongoDB Community tgz tarball from the following link:

MongoDB Download Center

  1. In the Version dropdown, select the version of MongoDB to download.

  2. In the Platform dropdown, select your operating system version and architecture.

  3. In the Package dropdown, select tgz.

  4. Click Download.

2

Using an archive manager program or the tar command, extract the files. For example, to extract from the terminal shell, you can use the following tar command:

Tip

If you downloaded a different MongoDB 5.0 point release, be sure to modify the command to reflect the correct .tgz file name.

tar -zxvf mongodb-linux-x86_64-*-5.0.29.tgz
3

The MongoDB binaries are in the <mongodb-install-directory>/bin directory. To avoid having to specify the path to the MongoDB binaries, add the contents of the <mongodb-install-directory>/bin/ directory to a directory in the $PATH such as /usr/bin/. For example, you can either:

  • Copy the binaries into /usr/bin/.

    sudo cp <mongodb-install-directory>/bin/* /usr/bin/

    -OR-

  • Create symbolic links to each of these binaries to /usr/bin/:

    sudo ln -s /full/path/to/<mongodb-install-directory>/bin/* /usr/bin/

    Replace /full/path/to with the full path to the extracted directory contents.

4

Install mongosh then use the MongoDB Shell to connect to your deployment.

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/mongo

  • its 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 mongod user account. If you change the user that runs the MongoDB process, you must also modify the permission to the /var/lib/mongo 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.

Follow these steps to run MongoDB Community Edition. These instructions assume that you are using the default settings.

1

Create a directory where the MongoDB instance stores its data. For example:

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/mongo

Create a directory where the MongoDB instance stores its log. For example:

sudo mkdir -p /var/log/mongodb

The user that starts the MongoDB process must have read and write permission to these directories. For example, if you intend to run MongoDB as yourself:

sudo chown `whoami` /var/lib/mongo # Or substitute another user
sudo chown `whoami` /var/log/mongodb # Or substitute another user
2

To run MongoDB, run the mongod process at the system prompt.

mongod --dbpath /var/lib/mongo --logpath /var/log/mongodb/mongod.log --fork

For details on the command-line options --dbpath and --logpath, see Options.

3

Verify that MongoDB has started successfully by checking the process output for the following line in the log file /var/log/mongodb/mongod.log:

[initandlisten] waiting for connections on port 27017

You may see non-critical warnings in the process output. As long as you see the log line shown above, you can safely ignore these warnings during your initial evaluation of MongoDB.

4

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.

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 which is accessible from the remote clients.

This value can be configured either:

  • in the MongoDB configuration file with bindIp, or

  • via the command-line argument --bind_ip

Warning

Before binding to a non-localhost (e.g. publicly accessible) IP address, ensure you have secured 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.

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