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I've installed mongodb and have been able to run it, work with it, do simple DB read / write type stuff. Now I'm trying to set up my Mac to run mongod as a service.

I get "Command not found" in response to: 

 init mongod start

In response to: 

~: service mongod start service: This command still works, but it is deprecated. Please use launchctl(8) instead. service: failed to start the 'mongod' service

And if I try:

~: launchctl start mongod launchctl start error: No such process

So obviously I'm blundering around a bit. Next step seems to be typing in random characters until something works. The command which does work is: mongod --quiet & I'm not sure, maybe that is the way you're supposed to do it? Maybe I should just take off 'quiet mode' and add > /logs/mongo.log to the end of the command line?

I'm building a development environment on a Mac with the intention of doing the same thing on a linux server. I'm just not sure of the Bash commands. All the other searches I do with trying to pull up the answer give me advice for windows machines.

Perhaps someone knows the linux version of the commands?

Thanks very much

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2
  • I have done on Windows with this link (stackoverflow.com/questions/2438055/…), not sure if same on Mac OS. Commented Apr 8, 2011 at 14:27
  • Thanks Scott, no I'd also seen and tried the stuff from your thread error command line: unknown option install Commented Apr 8, 2011 at 14:32

11 Answers 11

Reset to default
152

Edit: you should now use brew services start mongodb, as in Gergo's answer...

When you install/upgrade mongodb, brew will tell you what to do:

To have launchd start mongodb at login:

 ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/mongodb/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents

Then to load mongodb now:

 launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mongodb.plist

Or, if you don't want/need launchctl, you can just run:

 mongod

It works perfectly.

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5 Comments

I hadn't seen that instruction! This works perfectly for me on Mac OSX 10.8.4, I think I installed it with Brew. Jacob's comment in the accepted answer pointed to an unknown file when I tried it.
I prefer this solution over the accepted answer. Copying the plist in the answer above make things a little harder when updating mongo; you'll have to remember to update the paths as needed. Using a symlink as advised by homebrew however takes care of this for you. I used this approach, and the aliases from the answer above (replacing org.mongodb.mongod with homebrew.mxcl.mongodb), and things work great
I tried this solution and the database I was using "disappeared"! I believe this is the reason: the default plist provided by homebrew stores the mongod configuration at /usr/local/etc/mongod.conf. This configuration specifies the dbpath to be /usr/local/var/mongodb instead of the default /data/db. Just wanted to note this in the event it happens to someone else. To get my database to appear again, I had to unload and remove the symbolic link.
Note: There's some weirdness with launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mongodb.plist inside tmux
@ttemple any idea how to undo all these?
129

With recent builds of mongodb community edition, this is straightforward.

When you install via brew, it tells you what exactly to do. There is no need to create a new launch control file.

$ brew install mongodb ==> Downloading https://homebrew.bintray.com/bottles/mongodb-3.0.6.yosemite.bottle.tar.gz ### 100.0% ==> Pouring mongodb-3.0.6.yosemite.bottle.tar.gz ==> Caveats To have launchd start mongodb at login: ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/mongodb/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents Then to load mongodb now: launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mongodb.plist Or, if you don't want/need launchctl, you can just run: mongod --config /usr/local/etc/mongod.conf ==> Summary 🍺 /usr/local/Cellar/mongodb/3.0.6: 17 files, 159M
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5 Comments

Does mongod need to display information through the window server; does it need to be a launch agent or is it enough to make it a launch daemon?
Heads up to OSX users: I installed mongo via homebrew and it included /usr/local/Cellar/mongodb/2.4.5-x86_64/homebrew.mxcl.mongodb.plist (and was properly configured for my installation). Just copied homebrew.mxcl.mongodb.plist into LaunchAgents and followed the rest of these instructions (substituting homebrew.mxcl.mongodb for org.mongodb.mongod) and it works great.
You'd better scroll down for Mario Alemi's answer ;)
/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mongodb.plist: No such file or directory
First of all: MongoDB has it's own official Homebrew Tap you should use to install the community edition. $ brew tap mongodb/brew then install using $ brew install mongodb-community. As for the services, if you run $ brew services Homebrew now has that Tap included, so no need for doing anything. Also, about the startup services, if you just need MongoDB after you log in (as a dev server not a production server), use the ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ directory and not the system /Library/LaunchDeamons the latter requires root privileges .
75

Homebrew's services tap integrates formulas with the launchctl manager. Adding it is easy:

brew tap homebrew/services

You can then launch MongoDB with this command (this will also start mongodb on boot):

brew services start mongodb

You can also use stop or restart:

brew services stop mongodb brew services restart mongodb
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7 Comments

Liked the answer but found that brew will remove services in the future. brew services start mongodb Warning: brew services is unsupported and will be removed soon.
That's sad news. For now it's just deprecated, which means it will be removed sometime, but it still works. Hopefully someone will volunteer to maintain it as a tap. I will update my answer when it gets removed, or when a tap becomes available.
robots.thoughtbot.com/…
It has been removed already, since I see Error: Unknown command: services when I tried this way.
Thanks for this answer. @iplus26 it still works for me
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14

If you feel like having a simple gui to fix this (as I do), then I can recommend the mongodb pref-pane. Description: https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/macosx-preferences-pane-for-mongodb

On github: https://github.com/remysaissy/mongodb-macosx-prefspane

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3

Just installed MongoDB via Homebrew. At the end of the installation console, you can see an output as follows:

To start mongodb:

brew services start mongodb

Or, if you don't want/need a background service you can just run:

mongod --config /usr/local/etc/mongod.conf

So, brew services start mongodb, managed to run MongoDB as a service for me.

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2

I did a bit of looking around on the Mac side. You may want to use the installer here as it looks like it does all the setup for you to automatically launch on Mac OS. The only downside is it looks like it's using a pretty old mongo version.

This link here also explains the setup to get mongo automatically launching as a background service on the Mac.

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2 Comments

Link no longer available.
not sure if it was the exact same, but fixed link to go to article explaining the same concept
1

First Step

install mongodb in your linux machine with

apt install mongodb-client && apt install mongodb-server

second step is

change the database path instead of your system default path if you want.
so do the following steps and change it for yourself.

mongod --directoryperdb --dbpath /var/lib/mongodb/data/db --logpath /var/lib/mongodb/log/mongodb.log --logappend --rest

and in your windows machine do it just like that just put an --install flag. you have to get a successful message.

Best Regards...

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0

On macOS 10.13.6 with MongoDB 4.0

I was unable to connect to localhost from the mongo shell

I started MongoDB with:

mongod --config /usr/local/etc/mongod.conf

I found that the 'mongod.conf' had:

bindIp: 127.0.0.1

Change my JavaScript connection from localhost to 127.0.0.1 and it worked fine.

The same was occurring with MongoDB Compass too.

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0

mongod wasn't working to start the daemon for me but after I ran the following, it started working:

'mongod --fork --logpath /var/log/mongodb.log'

(from here: https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/tutorial/manage-mongodb-processes/)

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-1

After installing mongodb through brew, run this to get it up and running:

mongod --dbpath /usr/local/var/mongodb
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This is the same answer @Rejeev-Divakaran provided over five years ago. Please be sure to check existing answers before submitting a new one. If one exists that suggests your same approach, the appropriate action is to upvote it—a privilege you’ll earn after receiving four more reputation points, I believe.
-1 
mongod --dbpath [path_to_data_directory]
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1 Comment

OP wants to run it as a service, not interactively. A good answer should address this directly.

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