How To Install MongoDB on Ubuntu Desktop

MongoDB is the most popular NoSQL database server and it can be used to store JSON documents. MongoDB is a document-oriented, open-source and platform-independent Database Management System (DBMS). This tutorial provides all the steps required to install and setup the MongoDB 4 Community Server on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. The steps should be the same for other versions of MongoDB including MongoDB 3 and Linux systems.

This tutorial provides the steps required to install MongoDB on the Desktop version of Ubuntu. You can also follow the Ubuntu Server Tutorial published by Tutorials24x7 to install MongoDB on the server.

Notes: We need to start the MongoDB server when required. It won't be added to the startup tasks just like other desktop software.

Download MongoDB

Open the MongoDB Download Page and download the most recent version of MongoDB for Windows as shown in Fig 1.

Fig 1

Click on the Download Button to start the download as highlighted in Fig 1.

Install MongoDB

In this step, we will install MongoDB using the Debian package downloaded by us in the previous step. We can check the previous installation and remove it in case it's already installed on the system using the commands as shown below.

# Check previous installation
sudo apt list --installed | grep mongodb

# Take the backup of existing databases

# Completely remove previous installation
sudo apt remove mongodb
sudo apt purge mongodb

Now double click the installer downloaded by us. It will launch the installer as shown in Fig 2.

Fig 2

Click on the Install Button to start installing the MongoDB server. It will show the installation progress as shown in Fig 3 and Fig 4.

Fig 3

Fig 4

Now close the installer after completing the installation.

Verify Installation

In this step, we will verify the installation using the commands as shown below.

# Start the Service
sudo service mongod start

# Check version
mongod -version

# Output
db version v4.2.0
git version: a4b751dcf51dd249c5865812b390cfd1c0129c30
OpenSSL version: OpenSSL 1.1.1  11 Sep 2018
allocator: tcmalloc
modules: none
build environment:
    distmod: ubuntu1804
    distarch: x86_64
    target_arch: x86_64

This confirms that we have successfully installed the MongoDB server on the Ubuntu Desktop.

Server Commands

We can start and stop the server as system service using the commands as shown below.

# Start the Service
sudo service mongod start

# Restart the Service
sudo service mongod restart

# Stop the Service
sudo service mongod stop

# Check status
sudo service mongod status

The SOCK Issue

In case you see error having the message (code=exited, status=14) on restart or starting it again after stopping as shown below, you can follow the fix as mentioned in this section.

bravo@bravo:~$ sudo service mongod status
● mongod.service - MongoDB Database Server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mongod.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2019-09-24 19:33:56 IST; 3s ago
     Docs: https://docs.mongodb.org/manual
  Process: 20291 ExecStart=/usr/bin/mongod --config /etc/mongod.conf (code=exited, status=14)
 Main PID: 20291 (code=exited, status=14)
Sep 24 19:33:56 bravo systemd[1]: Started MongoDB Database Server.
Sep 24 19:33:56 bravo systemd[1]: mongod.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=14/
Sep 24 19:33:56 bravo systemd[1]: mongod.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

Fix the above issue using the commands as shown below.

# Move to temp directory
cd /tmp

# Find the mongodb sock file
ls *.sock

# Change user and group
sudo chown mongodb:mongodb <sock file>

# Start the server
sudo service mongod start

# Check status
sudo service mongod status

It should show the server status as shown below.

bravo@bravo:/tmp$ sudo service mongod status
● mongod.service - MongoDB Database Server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mongod.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Tue 2019-09-24 19:41:25 IST; 5s ago
     Docs: https://docs.mongodb.org/manual
 Main PID: 20447 (mongod)
   CGroup: /system.slice/mongod.service
           └─20447 /usr/bin/mongod --config /etc/mongod.conf
Sep 24 19:41:25 bravo systemd[1]: Started MongoDB Database Server.

Download and Install MongoDB Shell

Similar to the MongoDB server, we will install the MongoDB shell as shown in Fig 5.

Fig 5

It will show the installation progress as shown in Fig 6.

Fig 6

Getting Started With MongoDB

Start the MongoDB Shell as shown in Fig 7.

Fig 7

It shows the warning message indicating that the RBAC is not enabled. MongoDB provides options to create the Authentication Database to store user details and privileges across different databases. The same user having appropriate permissions can act on multiple databases using the Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). The RBAC provided by MongoDB governs access to a MongoDB system.

Now list the databases as shown below.

# List Databases
show databases

# Output
admin   0.000GB
config  0.000GB
local   0.000GB

We can see that MongoDB has already created three databases i.e. admin, config, and local. Now we will add the user admin with root role to the admin database using the commands as shown below.

# Switch to admin database
use admin

# Create the admin user with root role
db.createUser( { user: "admin", pwd: "<password>", roles: [ "root" ] } )

# Output
Successfully added user: { "user" : "admin", "roles" : [ "root" ] }

# Exit the Shell
exit

This is how we can add admin users to the admin database and assign a role to the user. We can start creating the databases and add data either using the shell or programmatically using the preferred language.

Summary

We have successfully installed the MongoDB Server and MongoDB Shell. We have also connected with the server using shell and added an admin user with the root role.