How To Install MongoDB 3.4 on Ubuntu 16.04

In this tutorial we'll learn how to install MongoDB 3.4 on Ubuntu 16.04. Managing MongoDB service, creating root user and uninstall MongoDB also explained.

Introduction  

In this guide, we will learn how to install MongoDB 3.4 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus). We Will also learn how to configure and secure our MongoDB installation,

What is mongoDB? from MongoDB website:

MongoDB is a document database with scalability and flexibility that you want with query and indexing that you need.

By following this tutorial you should be able to install MongoDB 3.4, configure and secure MongoDB installation on Ubuntu 16.04

Prerequisites  

• Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) with sudo access

Add MongoDB Repository  

First of all, let’s add the MongoDB public key. This key is used by package management tool like apt to ensure the consistency and authenticity of the package.

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv 0C49F3730359A14518585931BC711F9BA15703C6

The output should be similar to the text below

Executing: /tmp/tmp.XZgiMpeM0c/gpg.1.sh --keyserver
hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80
--recv
0C49F3730359A14518585931BC711F9BA15703C6
gpg: requesting key A15703C6 from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com
gpg: key A15703C6: public key <span class="token string">"MongoDB 3.4 Release Signing Key <[email protected]>"</span> imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:               imported: 1  <span class="token punctuation">(</span>RSA: 1<span class="token punctuation">)</span>
<span class="token operator"><</span>/[email protected]<span class="token operator">></span>

Create new file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-3.4.list that contain mongodb 3.4 repository info using command below

echo "deb \[arch=amd64\] http://repo.mongodb.org/apt/ubuntu xenial/mongodb-org/3.4 multiverse" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-3.4.list

Reload package database using the command below

sudo apt-get update

Install MongoDB 3.4  

To install the latest stable version of MongoDB 3.4 you can use the command below. At the time of this writing, the latest stable version of MongoDB 3.4 is 3.4.18.

sudo apt-get install mongodb-org

To install a previous stable version of MongoDB 3.4 you need to specify a version for each package. For example, if you need to install MongoDB 3.4.15 you can use the command below.

sudo apt-get install -y \
  mongodb-org=3.4.15 \
  mongodb-org-server=3.4.15 \
  mongodb-org-shell=3.4.15 \
  mongodb-org-mongos=3.4.15 \
  mongodb-org-tools=3.4.15

Managing MongoDB Service  

Now MongoDB installed let’s check MongoDB service using command below

sudo service mongod status

or we can use command below

sudo  systemctl status mongod

We will get output similar to below which inform that mongod is not running.

To start MongoDB service we can use command below:

sudo service mongod start

or we can also use systemctl to start MongoDB service

sudo systemctl start mongod

We will see output similar to output below

MongoDB service already started but it’s not enabled by default by seeing this line

Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mongod.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)

Let’s enable MongoDB service on boot by running

sudo systemctl enable mongodb
```bash

Now if we check MongoDB service status we will see that the service is enabled.

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## Checking MongoDB Service

Beside using `service` or `systemctl` command, we can check MongoDB service status using several tools.

To check where MongoDB service listening to we can use `netstat`

```bash
sudo netstat -naptu | grep 27017

We grep MongoDB default port 27017.

As alternative we can also grep mongod application name

sudo netstat -naptu | grep mongod

We can also use ss to do similar check like netstat

ss -at | grep 27017

We can check MongoDB service process using command below:

ps aux | grep -m1 mongod

For more detail resource usage of our MongoDB process we can use top and only show process run by MongoDB user.

top -u mongodb

Creating root and admin users  

MongoDB user management is different compared to RDBMS user management like MySQL or PostgreSQL.

In MongoDB, the user is managed per database. If you want to create an administrative user you need to create a user in admin database.

Connect to MongoDB using mongo client

mongo

Use command below to create user root with root role. Don’t forget to change the password.

db.createUser({user:"root", pwd:"changemeplease123123123", roles:\[{role:"root", db:"admin"}\]})

To generate random string for password on command line you can use comand below

uuidgen | sha256sum | awk {'print $1'}

or

uuidgen | sha256sum | cut -d ' ' -f 1

Enabling Authentication  

There are two ways to enable MongoDB authentication, by updating systemd service file or updating mongodb.conf file.

I recommend using the second method since mongodb service file might be overwrite by apt when we upgrade mongodb package.

Updating mongod.service file  

Open /lib/systemd/system/mongod.service file.

Find line

ExecStart=/usr/bin/mongod --config /etc/mongod.conf

Replace the line with

ExecStart=/usr/bin/mongod --config /etc/mongod.conf --auth --config /etc/mongod.conf

Reload systemd daemons

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Restart MongoDB service.

sudo systemctl restart mongod

Updating mongodb.conf file  

Open /etc/mongodb.conf file

Find line

#security:

Replace it with

security:
  authorization: enabled

Restart MongoDB service to enable authentication

sudo service mongod restart

After enabling authentication we can connect using root user that we just created on previous step.

mongo -uadmin admin -p

Uninstall MongoDB 3.4  

In this section we’ll learn how to uninstall MongoDB 3.4 from Ubuntu 16.04. Please be really careful when running command on this section.

Before we uninstall MongoDB 3.4 we need to stop MongoDB service first.

sudo service mongod stop

To uninstall MongoDB 3.4 we can use command below

sudo apt-get purge mongodb-org*

Command above only remove MongoDB packages.

To remove MongoDB log directory use command below

sudo rm -r /var/log/mongodb

To remove MongoDB data directory use command below

WARNING : command below will remove your data and cannot be restored. be very very very careful when you’re running command below.

sudo rm -r /var/lib/mongodb

MongoDB 3.4 References  

You can find references related to MongoDB 3.4 below

• MongoDB 3.4 Manual
• MongoDB 3.4 Release Notes
• MongoDB 3.4 FAQ
• Configuration file options
• MongoDB 3.4 What’s New (pdf)

Conclusion  

In this article, We learned to install MongoDB 3.4 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus). We also learned how to manage MongoDB service, check MongoDB service status using multiple tools, create root user and also enable authentication.

We also learned how to uninstall MongoDB 3.4 from Ubuntu 16.04.

Now you can start building your application using MongoDB as a database.