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Install MongoDB Community Edition on Debian

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Overview

Use this tutorial to install MongoDB 4.2 Community Edition from .deb packages on Debian.

Note

To install a different version of MongoDB, please refer to that version’s documentation. To install the previous version, see the tutorial for version 4.0.

Considerations

Production Notes

Before deploying MongoDB in a production environment, consider the Production Notes document.

Platform Support

EOL Notice

MongoDB 4.2 removes support for Debian 8 (“Jessie”).

MongodDB 4.2 supports:

  • Debian 10 “Buster” (Starting in version 4.2.1)
  • Debian 9 “Stretch”

MongoDB only provides packages for the 64-bit builds of these releases. See Supported Platforms for more information.

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) - Unsupported

MongoDB does not support WSL, and users on WSL have encountered various issues installing on WSL. For examples, see:

Install MongoDB Community Edition

Important

The mongodb-org package is officially maintained and supported by MongoDB Inc. and kept up-to-date with the most recent MongoDB releases. This installation procedure uses the mongodb-org package.

The mongodb package provided by Debian is not maintained by MongoDB Inc. and conflicts with the mongodb-org package. To check if Debian’s mongodb package is installed on the system, run sudo apt list --installed | grep mongodb. You can use sudo apt remove mongodb and sudo apt purge mongodb to remove and purge the mongodb package before attempting this procedure.

The Debian package management tools (i.e. dpkg and apt) ensure package consistency and authenticity by requiring that distributors sign packages with GPG keys.

1

Import the public key used by the package management system.

From a terminal, issue the following command to import the MongoDB public GPG Key from https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-4.2.asc:

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wget -qO - https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-4.2.asc | sudo apt-key add -

The operation should respond with an OK.

However, if you receive an error indicating that gnupg is not installed, you can:

  1. Install gnupg and its required libraries using the following command:

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    sudo apt-get install gnupg

  2. Once installed, retry importing the key:

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    wget -qO - https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-4.2.asc | sudo apt-key add -
2

Create a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-4.2.list file for MongoDB.

Create the list file using the command appropriate for your version of Debian:

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echo "deb http://repo.mongodb.org/apt/debian buster/mongodb-org/4.2 main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-4.2.list
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echo "deb http://repo.mongodb.org/apt/debian stretch/mongodb-org/4.2 main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-4.2.list
3

Reload local package database.

Issue the following command to reload the local package database:

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sudo apt-get update
4

Install the MongoDB packages.

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

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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:

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sudo apt-get install -y mongodb-org=4.2.1 mongodb-org-server=4.2.1 mongodb-org-shell=4.2.1 mongodb-org-mongos=4.2.1 mongodb-org-tools=4.2.1

If you only install mongodb-org=4.2.1 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:

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echo "mongodb-org hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
echo "mongodb-org-server hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
echo "mongodb-org-shell hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
echo "mongodb-org-mongos hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
echo "mongodb-org-tools hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections

See also

The recommended procedure to install is through the package manager, as detailed on this page. However, if you choose to install by directly downloading the .tgz file, see Install MongoDB Community on Debian Using .tgz Tarball.

Run MongoDB Community Edition

Production Notes
Before deploying MongoDB in a production environment, consider the Production Notes document.
ulimit Considerations
Most Unix-like operating systems limit the system resources that a session may use. These limits may negatively impact MongoDB operation. See UNIX ulimit Settings for more information.
Directories

By default, MongoDB instance stores:

  • its data files in /var/lib/mongodb
  • its log files in /var/log/mongodb

If you installed via the package manager, the 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.

Note

The following instructions assume that you have downloaded the official MongoDB mongodb-org packages, and not the unofficial mongodb package provided by Debian, and are using the default settings.

1

Start MongoDB.

Issue the following command to start mongod:

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sudo service mongod start
2

Verify that MongoDB has started successfully

Verify that the mongod process has started successfully:

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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

3

Stop MongoDB.

As needed, you can stop the mongod process by issuing the following command:

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sudo service mongod stop
4

Restart MongoDB.

Issue the following command to restart mongod:

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sudo service mongod restart
5

Begin using MongoDB.

Start a mongo shell on the same host machine as the mongod. You can run the mongo shell without any command-line options to connect to a mongod that is running on your localhost with default port 27017:

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mongo

For more information on connecting using the mongo shell, such as to connect to a mongod instance running on a different host and/or port, see The mongo Shell.

To help you start using MongoDB, MongoDB provides Getting Started Guides in various driver editions. See Getting Started for the available editions.

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.

1

Stop MongoDB.

Stop the mongod process by issuing the following command:

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sudo service mongod stop
2

Remove Packages.

Remove any MongoDB packages that you had previously installed.

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sudo apt-get purge mongodb-org*
3

Remove Data Directories.

Remove MongoDB databases and log files.

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sudo rm -r /var/log/mongodb
sudo rm -r /var/lib/mongodb

Additional Information

Packages

MongoDB provides officially supported packages in their own repository:

Package Name Description
mongodb-org A metapackage that will automatically install the four component packages listed below.
mongodb-org-server Contains the mongod daemon, associated init script, and a configuration file (/etc/mongod.conf). You can use the initialization script to start mongod with the configuration file. For details, see Run MongoDB Community Edition.
mongodb-org-mongos Contains the mongos daemon.
mongodb-org-shell Contains the mongo shell.
mongodb-org-tools Contains the following MongoDB tools: mongoimport bsondump, mongodump, mongoexport, mongofiles, mongorestore, mongostat, and mongotop.

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