Is your MongoDB service is not starting up?

This guide will help you.

Sometimes, issues with the the dbpath variable in /etc/mongodb.conf makes MongoDB service not to start.

Here at Ibmi Media, as part of our Server Management Services, we regularly help our Customers to resolve MongoDB errors.

In this context, we shall look into how to fix this MongoDB error.

What to do when the MongoDB service is not starting up?

One of our customers approached us telling us that his MongoDB was not starting up when the computer starts. It was only running as root user. 

He received the below error message when the command mongod:

couldn't open /data/db/transaction_processor_dummy_development.ns errno:1 Operation not permitted

However, when running the below command didn’t throw any error.

$ sudo service mongodb start

Now let's take a look at how our Support Experts resolve this problem for our customers.

We found that the reason for this error was the dbpath variable in /etc/mongodb.conf. 

Previously, the default value for dbpath was /data/db. The upstart job mongodb(which comes with mongodb-10gen package) invokes the mongod with –config /etc/mongodb.conf option.

So, we suggested our customer to change the owner of the /data/db directory recursively.

This resolved the problem.

Sometimes, this issue can arise due to file permissions problem as well.

So we can run the below command to check the permissions:

ls -l /var/lib/mongodb

Then to fix the permissions, run the below command.

# chown -R mongodb:mongodb /var/lib/mongodb

After that, we can remove the lock file by running the below command:

# rm /var/lib/mongodb/mongod.lock

Finally, we can start the MongoDB:

# service mongodb start

[Need urgent assistance in fixing MongoDB errors? – We are here to help you.]