MongoDB Installation

What is MongoDB?

MongoDB is a free and open-source big-data document database that stores data in flexible, JSON-like documents. FirstWave chose MongoDB as our back-end database because it is fast and reliable, all with relatively low overhead.

Which MongoDB version should be used?

Please see our Product Compatibility page for details regarding what product releases work (best) with which MongoDB versions.

Installing MongoDB

The installer in our product releases offers to install the latest supported version of MongoDB for you if none is present on your server, and no manual configuration should be required.

Upgrading MongoDB

Step by step procedures for upgrading MongoDB from 3.4 to 4.2 are available Upgrading to MongoDB 4.2

Step by step procedures for upgrading MongoDB from 4.2 to 6.0 are available Upgrading to MongoDB 6.0

Configuring MongoDB Authentication/Authorization with the setup_mongodb.pl Script

All FirstWave applications that require MongoDB ship with a configuration tool for MongoDB, named bin/setup_mongodb.pl. It's recommended that you use this tool for setting up MongoDB authentication, as it can deal with separate per-product MongoDB instances and simplifies the procedure substantially. The relevant product installers already offer to run the tool during installation and upgrades, hence you rarely need to run it manually.

To use the tool manually, simply run it as root and follow the prompts (if any):

$ sudo /usr/local/omk/bin/setup_mongodb.pl
setup_mongodb.pl version 1.0.3

Reading configuration file /usr/local/omk/conf/opCommon.nmis...
Checking authentication status for db_server localhost...
MongoDB on localhost:27017 is running in non-authenticated mode.
INFO: adding user opUserRW to database admin
INFO: adding user opUserRW to database nmis
INFO: adding user opUserRW to database optrend
...

If required the tool will prompt you for database credentials and advise on remote-vs-local operation, as well as authenticated-vs-nonauthenticated modes. The MongoDB setup helper can be run repeatedly with no adverse effects.

See how authentication is enabled in this mongod.conf on the NMIS9 VM that we ship.
See 'security:' >>' authorization: enabled':

/etc/mongod.conf

net:
  bindIp: 127.0.0.1
  port: 27017
processManagement:
  fork: true
  pidFilePath: /var/run/mongodb/mongod.pid
security:
  authorization: enabled
storage:
  dbPath: /data/mongo
  journal:
    enabled: true
  wiredTiger:
    engineConfig:
      cacheSizeGB: 1.7
systemLog:
  destination: file
  logAppend: true
  logRotate: reopen
  path: /var/log/mongodb/mongod.log

See paragraph Setting cacheSizeGB appropriately when MongoDB table type is wiredtiger (the default)
in this wiki page:
Reducing a Server's Memory Footprint when OMK applications are installed
for the calculation we use to calculate 'cacheSizeGB: 1.7' in the above mongod.conf file.

Resetting Databases with the setup_mongodb.pl Script

Should you want to reset one or more product databases to their initial empty state, you will need version 2.54 (or newer) of setup_mongodb.pl. With that version you may pass the extra arguments "drop=<dbname1>,<dbname2> confirm=YES", and setup_mongodb will completely empty the named databases. Please note that this is an irrevocable operation and may lead to substantial data loss if you pick the wrong database to drop!

You can find the database names in the standard configuration file conf/opCommon.nmis, under the keys <product>_db_name and db_name.

Please note that the database named by the key db_name (default name: "nmis") is shared and used by multiple products and therefore dropping this database would affect multiple products!

Deprecated - Historic Installation Instructions

As of September 2015 the installation instructions below are no longer applicable; the installer will take care of installation and initial configuration of MongoDB for you.

Click here to expand...

Debian:

Debian 7.0 (aka Wheezy) ships with a much older version, which should work but very likely won't provide adequate performance. However, the mongodb packages in wheezy-backports are fine, as are the versions in Testing/Jessie and Unstable. First make sure that you have Backports or Testing/Unstable enabled, then use sudo or su to run the following command as root:

apt-get install mongodb-clients mongodb-server

As an alternative you can also download Debian-ready packages from the MongoDB site, which do however use a different package name.

Ubuntu:

Recent versions of Ubuntu come with suitable MongoDB packages. Use sudo or su to become the root user, then run the following command:

apt-get install mongodb-clients mongodb-server

Installing the mongodb-server package will result in a working, automatically started MongoDB with no authentication.

Other Systems:

Download MongoDB from the Website at https://www.mongodb.org/downloads.

curl http://fastdl.mongodb.org/linux/mongodb-linux-x86_64-2.2.3.tgz -o mongodb-linux-x86_64-2.2.3.tgz
tar xvf mongodb-linux-x86_64-2.2.3.tgz
mv mongodb-linux-x86_64-2.2.3 /usr/local/
cd /usr/local/
ln -s mongodb-linux-x86_64-2.2.3 mongodb
ln -s mongodb/bin/mongo bin/mongo

FirstWave Setup for MongoDB

For Debian-derived distributions the default configuration is fine, but you might still want to adjust the database storage area. The configuration file is /etc/mongodb.conf, and the init script is in /etc/init.d/mongodb.

For other systems, check that the location in the provided init script is where you want the database to store its files (the default is mongodbpath=/var/mongodb for the original version):

NOTE - this file will only exist AFTER you have run an installer which requires mongodb.

vi /usr/local/omk/install/mongod.init.d

### you will see 
### two suggestions provided

mongodbpath=/var/mongodb
## mongodbpath=/data/mongodb

After you have the location you prefer, the next set of commands will put a start-up script in the correct location, register the script and then start mongo (before doing this make sure to consider how much data you plan to store. Each application has different needs and how you plan to use the application will have an enormous impact on the space required by the database). The last command here starts MongoDB, the first time it runs it can take some time to do its pre-allocation of database and journal files. This will depend on the performance of your storage.

# as root
cp /usr/local/omk/install/mongod.init.d /etc/init.d/mongod
chkconfig mongod on
service mongod start

If this is a Debian-derived system and you made config changes, then your mongod will already be running and you need to restart it like this:

#use su or sudo to become root
service mongodb restart
# or /etc/init.d/mongodb restart
# or invoke-rc.d mongodb restart

Manual MongoDB Authentication Configuration

Please note that these instructions are applicable only for MongoDB 2.4 and as such are of historic interest only.

Should using the setup_mongodb.pl helper not be an option for you, then you can still prime the database(s) manually for FirstWave use.

Load the mongo CLI, create the user for the admin DB, authenticate, then do the same for the NMIS db (change the username and password to your liking):

mongo

use admin;
db.addUser("opUserRW","op42flow42");
db.auth("opUserRW","op42flow42"); 

use nmis;
db.addUser("opUserRW","op42flow42");
db.auth("opUserRW","op42flow42");

NB: Now make sure that the user/pass matches the config in opCommon.nmis.

'database' => {
 'db_server' => 'localhost',
 'db_port' => '27017',
 'db_name' => 'nmis',
 'db_username' => 'opUserRW',
 'db_password' => 'op42flow42'
 },

If you don't require authentication simply skip the steps above and set the username in the configuration file to ''

# to disable authentication
 'db_username' => '',