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Install MongoDB Community Edition on Ubuntu

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Overview

The following tutorial uses a package manager to install MongoDB 4.2 Community Edition on LTS Ubuntu Linux systems.

Production Notes

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

MongoDB Version

This tutorial installs MongoDB 4.2 Community Edition . For other versions of MongoDB, refer to the corresponding version of the manual.

Platform Support

MongoDB only provides packages for the following 64-bit LTS (long-term support) Ubuntu releases:

  • 16.04 LTS (xenial)
  • 18.04 LTS (bionic)

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:

Package Updates required on Ubuntu 16.04 for IBM POWER Systems

Due to a lock elision bug present in older versions of the glibc package on Ubuntu 16.04 for POWER, you must upgrade the glibc package to at least glibc 2.23-0ubuntu5 before running MongoDB. Systems with older versions of the glibc package will experience database server crashes and misbehavior due to random memory corruption, and are unsuitable for production deployments of MongoDB

Install MongoDB Community Edition using .deb Packages

Note

You can also spin up MongoDB on AWS, Azure, or GCP using Atlas, our fully-managed database-as-a-service. Atlas enables you to configure anything from a free sandbox environment to a globally sharded production cluster. Set up a free cluster now.

Important

The mongodb-org-unstable 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-unstable package.

The mongodb package provided by Ubuntu is not maintained by MongoDB Inc. and conflicts with the mongodb-org-unstable package. To check if Ubuntu’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.

1

Import the public key used by the package management system.

The Ubuntu package management tools (i.e. dpkg and apt) ensure package consistency and authenticity by requiring that distributors sign packages with GPG keys. Issue the following command to import the MongoDB public GPG Key:

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sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv E162F504A20CDF15827F718D4B7C549A058F8B6B
2

Create a list file for MongoDB.

Create the list file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-4.2.list for your version of Ubuntu.

Click on the appropriate tab for your version of Ubuntu. If you are unsure of what Ubuntu version the host is running, open a terminal or shell on the host and execute lsb_release -dc.

The following instruction is for Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic). For Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial), click on the appropriate tab.

Create the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-4.2.list file for Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic):

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echo "deb [ arch=amd64 ] https://repo.mongodb.org/apt/ubuntu bionic/mongodb-org/4.1 multiverse" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-4.2.list

The following instruction is for Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial). For Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic), click on the appropriate tab.

Create the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-4.2.list file for Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial):

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echo "deb [ arch=amd64,arm64 ] https://repo.mongodb.org/apt/ubuntu xenial/mongodb-org/4.1 multiverse" | 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-unstable

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-unstable=4.1.11 mongodb-org-unstable-server=4.1.11 mongodb-org-unstable-shell=4.1.11 mongodb-org-unstable-mongos=4.1.11 mongodb-org-unstable-tools=4.1.11

If you only install mongodb-org-unstable=4.1.11 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-unstable hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
echo "mongodb-org-unstable-server hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
echo "mongodb-org-unstable-shell hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
echo "mongodb-org-unstable-mongos hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
echo "mongodb-org-unstable-tools hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections

For help with troubleshooting errors encountered while installing MongoDB on Ubuntu, see our troubleshooting guide.

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

If you installed via the package manager, the data directory /var/lib/mongodb and the log directory /var/log/mongodb are created during the installation.

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 data and log directories to give this user access to these directories.

Configuration File
The official MongoDB package includes a configuration file (/etc/mongod.conf). These settings (such as the data directory and log directory specifications) take effect upon startup. That is, if you change the configuration file while the MongoDB instance is running, you must restart the instance for the changes to take effect.

Important

The following instructions assume that you have downloaded the official MongoDB mongodb-org packages, and not the unofficial mongodb package provided by Ubuntu.

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 by checking the contents of the log file at /var/log/mongodb/mongod.log for a line reading

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[initandlisten] waiting for connections on port 27017

27017 is the default port the standalone mongod listens on.

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

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-unstable*
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

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 using .tgz Tarball on Ubuntu.

Additional Information

MongoDB Packages

MongoDB provides officially supported packages in their own repository:

Package Name Description
mongodb-org-unstable A metapackage that will automatically install the four component packages listed below.
mongodb-org-unstable-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-unstable-mongos Contains the mongos daemon.
mongodb-org-unstable-shell Contains the mongo shell.
mongodb-org-unstable-tools Contains the following MongoDB tools: mongoimport bsondump, mongodump, mongoexport, mongofiles, mongorestore, mongostat, and mongotop.

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