Your MongoDB service is not starting up? We can help you fix it.

Here at Bobcares, we have seen several such MongoDB errors as part of our Server Management Services for web hosts and online service providers.

Today, let us see how our Support Engineers resolve this MongoDB problem.

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 Engineers 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 any further assistance in fixing MongoDB errors? – We are here to help you.]

Conclusion

In short, the problem of starting MongoDB server when running the command mongod may arise due to file permission or ownership issues. Today, we saw how our Support Engineers fix this MongoDB error.