Installing CouchDB on FreeBSD 6.x and 7.x and 8.0

Installation from ports

cd /usr/ports/databases/couchdb
make install clean

This will install CouchDB 0.10.1 from the ports collection.

Post install

In case the install script fails to install a noninteractive user "couchdb" to be used for the database, the user needs to be created manually:

I used the pw command to add a user "couchdb" in group "couchdb":

shell# pw user add couchdb
shell# pw user mod couchdb -c 'CouchDB, time to relax' -s /usr/sbin/nologin -d /var/lib/couchdb
shell# pw group add couchdb

The user is added to /etc/passwd and should look similar to the following:

shell#  grep couchdb /etc/passwd
couchdb:*:1013:1013:Couchdb, time to relax:/var/lib/couchdb/:/usr/sbin/nologin

To change any of these settings, please refrain from editing /etc/passwd and instead use pw user mod ... or vipw. Make sure that the user has no shell, but instead uses /usr/sbin/nologin. The '*' in the second field means that this user can not login via password authorization. For details use man 5 passwd.

Start script

On FreeBSD, you use the following to start CouchDB:

shell# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/couchdb start

This script responds to the arguments start, stop, status, rcvar etc..

The following options for /etc/rc.conf or /etc/rc.conf.local are supported by the start script:

couchdb_enable="NO"
couchdb_enablelogs="YES"
couchdb_user="couchdb"

(Defaults shown.)

The start script will also use settings from the following config files:

/usr/local/etc/couchdb/default.ini
/usr/local/etc/couchdb/local.ini

Administrators should use default.ini as reference and only modify the local.ini file.

The logfile is configured to be written to

/var/log/couchdb/couch.log

In case the port does not set up correct permissions on the database directory, a command analogous to the following should be used:

shell# chown couchdb:couchdb /var/log/couchdb
shell# chown couchdb:couchdb /usr/local/lib/couchdb/erlang/lib/couch-0.10.1/priv/lib

command to have the couchdb process own the directory which allows it to write couch.log there. The other directories are "root:wheel" or "root:network". And I expected "/usr/local/var.." as location.

Starting CouchDB with

shell# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/couchdb start

should allow you to look at "http://localhost:5984" and see this JSON doc:

{"couchdb":"Welcome","version":"0.9.0"}

Then you should try "http://localhost:5984/_utils/" to see the "Futon" web interface,

I tried creating a database "db1" there and got an error. The solution was to

shell# chown couchdb:couchdb /var/lib/couchdb

Anyway, after this futon did report OK and I found a "/var/lib/couchdb/db1.couch" data file.

Installing from sources

When building from sources obtained from git clone git://github.com/halorgium/couchdb.git, you can get a strange "Syntax error: end of file unexpected". You need to use gmake instead of make.

If you get aclocal: not found on ./bootstrap you need to pkg_add -r automake19.

If you get libtoolize: not found on ./bootstrap you need to pkg_add -r libtool.

If you get error: Could not find the js library on ./configure you need to pkg_add -r spidermonkey.

If you get error: Library requirements (ICU) not met on ./configure you need to pkg_add -r icu.

If you get error: Library requirements (curl) not met on ./configure you need to pkg_add -r curl.

Current TODO

• Change /var/lib/couchdb/ to /var/db/couchdb/
• Create /var/log/couchdb/
• Create a couchdb user with port install

Questions?

Please check out the github repository, or email TillKlampaeckel.