Install MongoDB Community Edition on Amazon Linux

MongoDB Atlas and AWS

MongoDB Atlas is a hosted MongoDB service on AWS, for launching, running, and maintaining MongoDB clusters.

Overview

Use this tutorial to install MongoDB 3.6 Community Edition on Amazon Linux using the yum package manager.

Verify Linux Distribution

You can verify which Linux distribution you are running by running the following command on the command-line:

grep ^NAME  /etc/*release

The result should be Amazon Linux AMI. If using a different Linux distribution, please see the install instructions for your platform.

MongoDB Version

This tutorial installs MongoDB 3.6 Community Edition. To install a different version of MongoDB Community, use the version drop-down menu in the upper-left corner of this page to select the documentation for that version.

Considerations

Platform Support

MongoDB 3.6 Community Edition supports the following 64-bit Amazon Linux release on x86_64 architecture:

  • Amazon Linux (2013.03 or later)

MongoDB only supports the 64-bit version of this platform.

See Supported Platforms for more information.

Production Notes

Before deploying MongoDB in a production environment, consider the Production Notes document which offers performance considerations and configuration recommendations for production MongoDB deployments.

Install MongoDB Community Edition

Follow these steps to install MongoDB Community Edition using the yum package manager.

1

Configure the package management system (yum).

Create a /etc/yum.repos.d/mongodb-org-3.6.repo file so that you can install MongoDB directly using yum:

Changed in version 3.0: MongoDB Linux packages are in a new repository beginning with 3.0.

For MongoDB 3.6

Use the following repository file:

[mongodb-org-3.6]
name=MongoDB Repository
baseurl=https://repo.mongodb.org/yum/amazon/2013.03/mongodb-org/3.6/x86_64/
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-3.6.asc

For versions of MongoDB earlier than 3.6

To install the packages from an earlier release series such as 3.4, you can specify the release series in the repository configuration. For example, to restrict your system to the 3.4 release series, create a /etc/yum.repos.d/mongodb-org-3.4.repo file to hold the following configuration information for the MongoDB 3.4 repository:

[mongodb-org-3.4]
name=MongoDB 3.4 Repository
baseurl=https://repo.mongodb.org/yum/amazon/2013.03/mongodb-org/3.4/x86_64/
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1

You can also download the .rpm files directly from the MongoDB repository . Downloads are organized by Amazon Linux version (e.g. 2013.03), then MongoDB release version (e.g. 3.6), then architecture (e.g. x86_64). Odd-numbered MongoDB release versions, such as 3.7, are development versions and are unsuitable for production deployment.

2

Install the MongoDB packages.

To install the latest stable version of MongoDB, issue the following command:

sudo yum install -y mongodb-org

To install a specific release of MongoDB, specify each component package individually and append the version number to the package name, as in the following example:

sudo yum install -y mongodb-org-3.6.19 mongodb-org-server-3.6.19 mongodb-org-shell-3.6.19 mongodb-org-mongos-3.6.19 mongodb-org-tools-3.6.19

You can specify any available version of MongoDB. However yum will upgrade the packages when a newer version becomes available. To prevent unintended upgrades, pin the package. To pin a package, add the following exclude directive to your /etc/yum.conf file:

exclude=mongodb-org,mongodb-org-server,mongodb-org-shell,mongodb-org-mongos,mongodb-org-tools

Run MongoDB Community Edition

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

By default, MongoDB instance stores:

  • its data files in /var/lib/mongo
  • its log files in /var/log/mongodb

If you installed via the package manager, these default directories are created during the installation.

If you installed manually by downloading the tarballs, you can create the directories using mkdir -p <directory> or sudo mkdir -p <directory> depending on the user that will run MongoDB. (See your linux man pages for information on mkdir and sudo.)

By default, MongoDB runs using the mongod user account. If you change the user that runs the MongoDB process, you must also modify the permission to the /var/lib/mongo and /var/log/mongodb directories to give this user access to these directories.

To specify a different log file directory and data file directory, edit the systemLog.path and storage.dbPath settings in the /etc/mongod.conf. Ensure that the user running MongoDB has access to these directories.

Procedure

Follow these steps to run MongoDB Community Edition. These instructions assume that you are using the default settings.

Init System

To run and manage your mongod process, you will be using your operating system’s built-in init system. Recent versions of Linux tend to use systemd (which uses the systemctl command), while older versions of Linux tend to use System V init (which uses the service command).

If you are unsure which init system your platform uses, run the following command:

ps --no-headers -o comm 1

Then select the appropriate tab below based on the result:

  • systemd - select the systemd (systemctl) tab below.
  • init - select the System V Init (service) tab below.

1

Start MongoDB.

You can start the mongod process by issuing the following command:

sudo systemctl start mongod

If you receive an error similar to the following when starting mongod:

Failed to start mongod.service: Unit mongod.service not found.

Run the following command first:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Then run the start command above again.

2

Verify that MongoDB has started successfully.

You can verify that the mongod process has started successfully by issuing the following command:

sudo systemctl status mongod

You can optionally ensure that MongoDB will start following a system reboot by issuing the following command:

sudo systemctl enable mongod
3

Stop MongoDB.

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

sudo systemctl stop mongod
4

Restart MongoDB.

You can restart the mongod process by issuing the following command:

sudo systemctl restart mongod

You can follow the state of the process for errors or important messages by watching the output in the /var/log/mongodb/mongod.log file.

5

Begin using MongoDB.

Start a mongo shell on the same host machine as the mongod. Use the --host command line option to specify the localhost address and port that the mongod listens on: