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I would like to run mongod in the background as an always present sort of thing. What would be the best way to do this? Kind of like the way I can run MySQL on startup and it's just always there running in the background. Maybe it's just some bash scripts, but it would be nice to hear if there is a better way. If it is just bash - what would that look like? Thanks.

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4 Answers 4

up vote 21 down vote accepted

The MongoDB daemon (mongod) has a command-line option to run the server in the background...


This command-line option requires that you also specify a file to log messages to (since it can not use the current console). An example of this command looks like:


You could put this into an /etc/init.d/mongod bash script file. And then to have the service run at startup, create the standard symbolic links (S## & K##) inside of /etc/rc#.d/. Here is a tutorial that explains this process in more detail. Scroll down to the section titled "Init Script Activation". This also has the added benefit of being able to execute commands like...

service mongod status
service mongod start
service mongod stop
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Spot on..thank you! –  KitCarrau Oct 17 '11 at 10:07

Classically, to run in the background, just start with
nohup some_command -to launch &
So that is nohup &, put the command you want to run in the background between nohup and &. It will run as you, it will keep running after you close the terminal or log out. You could start it as another user via sudo. To make it run on start, add it to the init scripts replacement (don't know what they call it). It will write any output to a file where you started it called nohup.out

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The best way to get a program to run at startup on OS X is to create a LaunchDaemon (see Apple's docs, and take a look at some of the Apple-supplied daemons in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons) and install it in /Library/LaunchDaemons. Lingon can help you create the .plist file.

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Since you are on a Mac, you should use Homebrew to install MongoDB (you will need to install Homebrew if you haven't yet):

brew install mongodb

Let's say the version that was installed is named 2.0.6-x86_64. Then add the LaunchAgent plist file that it generates for you:

mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents
cp /usr/local/Cellar/mongodb/2.0.6-x86_64/homebrew.mxcl.mongodb.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mongodb.plist

This will launch mongod in the background now and every time you restart your computer.

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