How to Install MongoDB on Debian/Ubuntu

May 19, 2017

Author: Nancy Wilson

MongoDB is becoming more popular now-a-days.

NoSQL (originally referring to "non SQL", "non relational" or "not only SQL" as per Wikipedia.)

Due to its No Structured Language architecture, this is preferred by many Corporate Giants and Big Companies. They are migrating their storages to MongoDB because of its high performance and high-availability and easy scalability options.

The MongoDB stores the data not in a relational format, but through simple JSON format. The MongoDB calls it BSON. BSON is nothing but a binary form of storage of objects and arrays.

Terms compared between MongoDB and MySQL DB

Following is the simple comparison of terms compared between MySQL DB and MongoDB.

MySQL DB

MongoDB text

Database

Table

Collection

Rows

Document

Column

We do not have table columns in MongoDB, as it does not have a fixed table schema structure.

How to install MongoDB on Debian/Ubuntu

Following are the steps involved in installing MongoDB on Debian/Ubuntu servers. The following tutorial describes the installation of MongoDB version (3.2)

Importing Public Key

We need to import the GPG public key for the Debian package management, in order to install using apt-get, done using following command

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv EA312927

Creating Source List File

We need to create the source list file, so that sources for installing MongoDB can be fetched while using apt-get install, done using following command.

echo "deb http://repo.mongodb.org/apt/ubuntu "$(lsb_release -sc)"/mongodb-org/3.2 multiverse"

| sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-3.2.list

This will fetch the right source list file based on your operating system distribution.

Update Source Repository

Update the apt-get repository to reload the source repository changes using following command.

sudo apt-get update

Install MongoDB

Install the latest stable version of MongoDB using following command.

sudo apt-get install -y mongodb-org

Running MongoDB

You can use following commands to start / stop / restart and getting status regarding MongoDB service.

service mongod start // To start MongoDB Service service mongod stop // To stop running MongoDB Service service mongod restart // To restart running MongoDB Service service mongod status // To get status of running MongoDB Service

Verify if MongoDB is running

You can use the following command to see if MongoDB has started and is running fine.

netstat -nalp | grep mongod // This command will show you the output of mongod service running using port 27017 tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:27017 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 35482/mongod

The MongoDB by default uses port 27017

The default configuration path is /etc/mongod.conf

The logs by default get stored in the path /var/log/mongodb/mongod.log

By default MongoDB will listen to only 127.0.0.1, If you want MongoDB to listen on your network interfaces, you need to configure them manually in the configuration file.

MongoDB Shell

MongoDB shell can be opened using following command.

mongo

In case, you get errors in opening MongoDB shell cli, then you need to export LC environment variables using following command

export LC_ALL=C mongo // Start Mongo shell after running export command Note: The installation steps covered above are for the open-source community edition of MongoDB.

MongoDB UI

MongoDB does not include any User Interface or GUI for management.

There are many 3rd party tools available like

MongoBooster RoboMongo