Create a MongoDB user from commandline

Question

I have set up a MongoDB database with an admin user that has only administrative rights, not read or write access to databases.

What I now would want to do is:

Add a new database,
and add a new user to that database.

And: I need to do this from the command line. So I tried:

$ mongo admin -u admin -p admin --eval "db.addUser('dummyuser', 'dummysecret')"

(Please note that as I am still running MongoDB 2.0, I am using the old format of db.addUser.)

This would make perfect sense if I could also tell it which database this user should be for. But now I am struggling. How do I specify the database for this command? If I were in the interactive shell, I could just run

> use dummydb

but how do I do this from the command line? My first try was to concatenate both commands with a ;, but this didn't work:

$ mongo admin -u admin -p admin --eval "use dummydb;db.addUser('dummyuser', 'dummysecret')"

just gives me syntax error.

How do I get this right?

Stennie · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-17 02:29:50Z

34

The use db syntax is only supported in an interactive shell session.

If you want to change databases from an admin script, you can use db.getSiblingDB('dbname').

So your equivalent command line using --eval would be:

# MongoDB 2.6+: use createUser()
$ mongo admin -u admin -p admin --eval "db.getSiblingDB('dummydb').createUser({user: 'dummyuser', pwd: 'dummysecret', roles: ['readWrite']})"

# MongoDB 2.4: use addUser()
$ mongo admin -u admin -p admin --eval "db.getSiblingDB('dummydb').addUser('dummyuser', 'dummysecret')"

There is a section in the MongoDB manual covering Differences between interactive and scripted mongo. This includes equivalents for other interactive shell helpers such as show dbs and show collections.

edited Jul 17, 2019 at 2:29

answered Mar 27, 2014 at 10:21

Stennie

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4 Comments

Tyguy7 Over a year ago

this does not work. [collectionName] is not defined, even though it clearly is

Stennie Over a year ago

@Tyguy7 Can you please create a new question with details of what you tried and your environment (specific version of MongoDB shell & server)? The answer you are commenting on is from more than 5 years ago and makes no reference to [collectionName]. Thanks!

Stennie Over a year ago

@Tyguy7 FYI, I also updated the example here with syntax for modern versions of MongoDB that use db.createUser() instead of the older (and now removed) db.addUser() shell helper.

Andrew Farrugia Sep 10 at 9:36

This worked for me. I am trying to script creation of using and use db was failing. in 2025 AI could not solve this problem, this post did. BTW, this works on MongoDB 8.0

Golo Roden · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-27 09:21:06Z

7

Solved it by putting the commands

use dummydb
db.addUser('dummyuser', 'dummysecret')

into a .js file, and then ran MongoDB by calling:

$ mongo admin -u admin -p admin < setupMongoDB.js

That's it :-)

answered Mar 27, 2014 at 9:21

Golo Roden

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Comments

Hamit YILDIRIM · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-12 15:25:43Z

3

Above in my case didn't worked

use dummyDb

db.createUser({user: "admin",pwd: "secrectP@wd",roles: [ { role: "readWrite", db: "reporting" } ],mechanisms: [ "SCRAM-SHA-256" ]   }

edited Jun 12, 2020 at 15:25

answered Jun 26, 2019 at 8:03

Hamit YILDIRIM

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