How to Install MongoDB on Debian 10 (Buster)

Because I couldn't find proper and working documentation for installing mongoDB on Debian 10 (Buster), I thought it would be useful to describe how I literally lost time with it.

Prerequisites

This guide assumes that you are using Debian 10. Before you begin, you should have a non-root user with sudo privileges set up on your system. You can learn how to set this up by following the initial server setup for Debian 10 tutorial.

Step 1. Add MongoDB repository

At the moment, the mongoDB repository simply doesn't have a stable version 4 of the database for Debian 10, so we'll have to go round the clock and look for everything ourselves (good thing I already did).

First, we need to add the MongoDB signing key with apt-key add. We’ll need to make sure the curl command is installed before doing so:

~$ sudo apt install curl

Next we download the key and pass it to apt-key add:

~$ curl https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-4.4.asc | sudo apt-key add -

Next we’ll create a source list for the MongoDB repo, so apt knows where to download from. To do this, we execute the command:

~$ echo "deb http://repo.mongodb.org/apt/debian buster/mongodb-org/development main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org.list

Step 2. Install libcurl3

The libcurl3 package is required by mongodb-org-server. Since the default version for Debian 10 is libcurl4, this package will be downloaded from added Debian 9 repository. To return the curl command to work, follow the steps described in this article.

~$ echo "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ stretch main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stretch.list
~$ sudo apt update
~$ sudo apt -y install libcurl3

Step 3. Install MongoDB Server on Debian 10 (Buster)

We have added required repositories and installed libcurl3. Let’s now install MongoDB Server on Debian 10 (Stretch).:

~$ sudo apt -y install mongodb-org

Get package information with apt info command.

~$ apt info mongodb-org
Package: mongodb-org
Version: 4.2.1~latest
Priority: optional
Section: database
Maintainer: Ernie Hershey <ernie.hershey@mongodb.com>
Installed-Size: 13.3 kB
Depends: mongodb-org-shell, mongodb-org-server, mongodb-org-mongos, mongodb-org-tools

The installation of the above package will install the following dependency packages:

mongodb-org-server – This provides MongoDB daemon mongod
mongodb-org-mongos – This is a MongoDB Shard daemon
mongodb-org-shell – This provides a shell to MongoDB
mongodb-org-tools – MongoDB tools used for export, dump, import etc

Step 4. Start MongoDB Server on Debian 10 (Buster)

The server daemon is named mongod. Start and set it to start on server reboot/boot up:

~$ sudo systemctl enable --now mongod

Check its running status:

~$ sudo systemctl status mongod
● mongod.service - MongoDB Database Server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mongod.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Fri 2019-10-18 14:53:55 MSK; 4s ago
     Docs: https://docs.mongodb.org/manual
 Main PID: 6596 (mongod)
   Memory: 78.5M
   CGroup: /system.slice/mongod.service
           └─6596 /usr/bin/mongod --config /etc/mongod.conf

Oct 18 14:53:55 220943.simplecloud.ru systemd[1]: Started MongoDB Database Server.

If you have caught an error the first time you run it, the following steps are likely to help you:

~$ sudo systemctl stop mongod
~$ sudo rm -rf /var/lib/mongodb
~$ sudo mkdir /var/lib/mongodb
~$ sudo chown -R mongodb:mongodb /var/lib/mongodb
~$ sudo systemctl start mongod

The service listens on localhost TCP port 27017 by default, check it:

~$ ss -tunelp
Netid            State             Recv-Q            Send-Q                             Local Address:Port                          Peer Address:Port
udp              UNCONN            0                 0                             96.123.217.94%eth0:68                                 0.0.0.0:*                uid:102 ino:82671 sk:1 <->
udp              UNCONN            0                 0                                        0.0.0.0:68                                 0.0.0.0:*                ino:14242 sk:2 <->
tcp              LISTEN            0                 128                                      0.0.0.0:22                                 0.0.0.0:*                ino:15174 sk:3 <->
tcp              LISTEN            0                 128                                    127.0.0.1:27017                              0.0.0.0:*                uid:106 ino:259576 sk:7 <->
tcp              LISTEN            0                 128                                      0.0.0.0:80                                 0.0.0.0:*                ino:144683 sk:4 <->
tcp              LISTEN            0                 128                                         [::]:22                                    [::]:*                ino:15185 sk:5 v6only:1 <->
tcp              LISTEN            0                 128                                         [::]:80                                    [::]:*                ino:144684 sk:6 v6only:1 <->

That's all, thanks for reading.