Install MongoDB Community Edition on Ubuntu

Overview

The following tutorial uses a package manager to install MongoDB4.2 Community Edition on LTS Ubuntu Linux systems.

Production Notes

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

MongoDB Version

This tutorial installs MongoDB 4.2 Community Edition . Forother versions of MongoDB, refer to the corresponding version of themanual.

Platform Support

Note

• MongoDB 4.2 removes support for Ubuntu 14.04.
• Starting in version 4.2, MongoDB Community removes support onUbuntu 16.04 ARM64.

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 encounteredvarious issues installing on WSL. For examples, see:

• https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/3286
• https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/796

Install MongoDB Community Edition using .deb Packages

Important

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

The mongodb package provided by Ubuntu is notmaintained by MongoDB Inc. and conflicts with themongodb-org package. To check if Ubuntu’s mongodb package isinstalled on the system, run sudo apt list —installed |grep mongodb. You can use sudo apt remove mongodb and sudoapt purge mongodb to remove and purge the mongodbpackage before attempting this procedure.

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.

Import the public key used by the package management system.

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

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 notinstalled, you can:

• Install gnupg and its required libraries using the following command:

sudo apt-get install gnupg

• Once installed, retry importing the key:

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

Create a list file for MongoDB.

Create the list file/etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-4.2.list for yourversion 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.

• Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic)
• Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial)

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

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

echo "deb [ arch=amd64 ] https://repo.mongodb.org/apt/ubuntu bionic/mongodb-org/4.2 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), clickon the appropriate tab.

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

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

Reload local package database.

Issue the following command to reload the local package database:

sudo apt-get update

Install the MongoDB packages.

You can install either the latest stable version of MongoDB or aspecific version of MongoDB.

• Install the latest version of MongoDB.
• Install a specific release 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 packageindividually along with the version number, as in thefollowing example:

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 thecomponent packages, the latest version of each MongoDB package will beinstalled 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 becomesavailable. To prevent unintended upgrades, you can pin the packageat the currently installed version:

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

For help with troubleshooting errors encountered while installingMongoDB on Ubuntu, see ourtroubleshooting guide.

Run MongoDB Community Edition

• Production Notes
• Before deploying MongoDB in a production environment, consider theProduction Notes document.
• ulimit Considerations
• Most Unix-like operating systems limit the system resources that asession 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 arecreated during the installation.

By default, MongoDB runs using the mongodb user account. Ifyou change the user that runs the MongoDB process, you must alsomodify the permission to the data and log directories to give thisuser access to these directories.

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

Important

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

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 startedsuccessfully:

sudo service mongod status

You can also check the log file for the current status of themongod process, located at:/var/log/mongodb/mongod.log by default. A runningmongod instance will indicate that it is ready forconnections with the following line:

[initandlisten] waiting for connections on port 27017

Stop MongoDB.

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

sudo service mongod stop

Restart MongoDB.

Issue the following command to restart mongod:

sudo service mongod restart

Begin using MongoDB.

Start a mongo shell on the same host machine as themongod. You can run the mongo shellwithout any command-line options to connect to amongod that is running on your localhost with defaultport 27017:

mongo

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

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

Uninstall MongoDB Community Edition

To completely remove MongoDB from a system, you must remove the MongoDBapplications themselves, the configuration files, and any directories containingdata 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 yourconfiguration and data is backed up before proceeding.

Stop MongoDB.

Stop the mongod process by issuing the following command:

sudo service mongod stop

Remove Packages.

Remove any MongoDB packages that you had previously installed.

sudo apt-get purge mongodb-org*

Remove Data Directories.

Remove MongoDB databases and log files.

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 bydirectly downloading the .tgz file, seeInstall MongoDB Community on Ubuntu using .tgz Tarball.

Additional Information

MongoDB Packages

MongoDB provides officially supported packages in their own repository: