Install Mongodb Macos Catalina

However, if you are using latest Mac version Catalina then the root folder is no longer writable. Brew has an updated version of mongodb to use a new path (which it creates itself), /usr/local/var/mongodb and following these instructions will fix the issue: Follow the link to install and update mongodb-community-edition. Question or issue on macOS: I’m relatively new to MongoDB and am trying to install MongoDB on my Mac with Homebrew, but I’m getting the following error: Error: No available formula with the name 'mongodb' Searching for a previously deleted formula (in the last month). Warning: homebrew/core is shallow clone. To get complete history.

  • Today, you'll learn to install the MongoDB community edition on macOS Catalina and higher. Creating Data Folder. Before you install and use MongoDB, you need to create a data/db folder on your computer for storing MongoDB data. Before macOS Catalina, you can create this folder in the user's root directory with the following command.
  • If you have already done this for a previous installation of MongoDB, you can skip this step. To install MongoDB, run the following command in your macOS Terminal application: brew install mongodb-community@4.4. Created with Sketch. Alternatively, you can specify a previous version of MongoDB if desired.

Question or issue on macOS:

I updated to MacOS 10.15 (Catalina) today. When I run mongod in the terminal it cannot find the /data/db directory:

I tried to install MongoDB with brew:

Any help?

How to solve this problem?

Solution no. 1:

This is the main error:


exception in initAndListen: NonExistentPath: Data directory /data/db not found., terminating

Catalina has a surprise change: it won’t allow changes to the root directory (this was discussed in a forum thread as well):

Unfortunately, this is not spelled out explicitly in Apple’s Catalina release notes, other than a brief mention in Catalina features:


macOS Catalina runs in a dedicated, read-only system volume

Since the directory /data/db is coded as MongoDB default, a workaround is to specify a different dbpath that is not located on the root directory. For example:

This will place MongoDB’s data in your home directory. Just make sure that the path ~/data/db actually exists.

Alternative method

An alternative method is to follow the instructions at Install MongoDB Community Edition on macOS by leveraging brew:

This will create some additional files by default:

  • the configuration file (/usr/local/etc/mongod.conf)
  • the log directory path (/usr/local/var/log/mongodb)
  • the data directory path (/usr/local/var/mongodb)
Install mongodb macos catalina update

To run mongod you can either:

  • Run the command manually from the command line (this can be aliased for convenience):

  • Run MongoDB as a service using brew services. Note that this will run MongoDB as a standalone node (not a replica set), so features that depends on the oplog e.g. changestreams will not work unless you modify the mongod configuration file:

Solution no. 2:

After installing Catalina, you might have a folder on your Desktop called Relocated Items. You can find the data/db folder inside the Security folder.

All I had to do was move the Security/data/db, specifically data/db and place it inside my home folder.

You can do this with the Finder app or with the terminal by running the following command:

After that run:
mongod --dbpath ~/data/db

It’s up to you to create the alias

Solution no. 3:

Kevinadi already did justice to the question, however this is how I went about solving the problem:

After installing mongodb-community

  1. sudo mkdir -p /System/Volumes/Data/data/db (Create the data/db folder)
  2. sudo chown -Rid -un/System/Volumes/Data/data/db (Give permissions)
  3. mongod --dbpath=/System/Volumes/Data/data/db (Change dbpath of mongodb)
  4. mongod (Runs well)

I found this article on installing mongodb very useful

Solution no. 4:

found a trick…
delete the ~/data/db entire folder from the directory
then recreate a new one but DO NOT USE mkdir -p /data/db
instead, just use your trackpad to do it
use system way to create folder

this worked for me

Solution no. 5:

Here’s what worked for me:

  1. Create a folder somewhere e.g. Development/mongodb/data/db
  2. Open mongod.conf file and update storage.dbPath value to the the newly created folder path

Solution no. 6:

this script can be helpful https://gist.github.com/sturmenta/cf19baa91b1d79d8ae2b305fb7e1f799

Install Mongodb Macos Catalina

🤙🏻🤙🏻🤙🏻

Solution no. 7:

Mac version Catalina made the root folder is no longer writable.

Brew has an updated version of mongodb to use a new path (which it creates itself), /usr/local/var/mongodb and following these instructions will fix the issue:

brew install [email protected] where the first VERSION with the fix is 4.2

Solution no. 8:

Your docker image will be able to find your directories regardless of where they are if you use relative directory references ~/Desktop will map your Mac Desktop directory into your image as /Desktop.

Solution no. 9:

Go to ~/Users/Shared folder.
here, you will find a folder titled ‘Relocated items’ inside that you will be able to find a ‘data’ folder.This ‘data folder contains your mongodb database in`/data/db’.

Now, copy this ‘data’ folder and paste it in your Users/<name-of-your-user-account-with-the-home-icon'>.

And now open zsh terminal and run mongod --dbpath ~/data/db and now open a new shell in a separate tab and type mongo to open the mongo shell and you will be good to go.

Remember to use mongod --dbpath ~/data/db each time while running mongod or make an alias.

Install Mongodb Macos Catalina Update

Hope this helps!

I recently bought a new iMac and moved all of my files over using Time Machine. The migration went really well overall and within a few hours I had my development machine up and running. After starting an application I’m building I quickly realized that I couldn’t get MongoDB to start. Running the following command resulted in an error about the data/db directory being read-only:

I tried every chmod and chown command known to man and woman kind, tried manually changing security in Finder, compared security to my other iMac (they were the same), and tried a bunch of other things as well. But, try as I might I still saw the read-only folder error when trying to start the server….very frustrating. I found a lot of posts with the same issue but they all solved it by changing security on the folder. That wasn’t the problem on my machine.

After doing more research I found out that Catalina added a new volume to the hard drive and creates a special folder where the MongoDB files need to go. The new folder is:

The MongoDB files can then go at:

Install Mongodb Macos Catalina

I ran the following commands to install the latest version of MongoDB using Homebrew (see https://github.com/mongodb/homebrew-brew for more details):

I then went into the MongoDB config file at /usr/local/etc/mongod.conf. Note that it’s possible yours may be located in a different location based on how you installed MongoDB. I changed the dbPath value to the following and copied my existing DB files into the folder:

Finally, I made sure my account had the proper access to the folder by running chown (something I had tried many times earlier but on a folder outside of /System/Volumes/Data):

After that I was able to start MongoDB and everything was back to normal. Hopefully this saves someone a few hours – I wasted way too much time on the issue. 🙂