How to start Mongo daemon with auth support

I just tested this with a fresh Debian 7 install, and a fresh install of MongoDB. I added a user (adam) first, then edited the /etc/mongod.conf file to uncomment the auth = true line. I then issued the service mongod restart command and attempted to log in as the user, and succeeded - I also tried incorrect credentials and failed. Hence, authentication seems to be working just fine, there were no obvious problems using the config file to specify authentication is enabled.

So, a couple of questions:

  • How are you testing that authentication is enabled?
  • Do you perhaps have more than one line in your config file that ontains auth/noauth statements?

For reference, here's most of my testing with the feedback from the shell etc.

First, the install and setting up the initial user:

root@deb7:~# apt-get install mongodb-org
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  mongodb-org-mongos mongodb-org-server mongodb-org-shell mongodb-org-tools
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  mongodb-org mongodb-org-mongos mongodb-org-server mongodb-org-shell
  mongodb-org-tools
0 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 0 to remove and 20 not upgraded.
Need to get 114 MB of archives.
After this operation, 287 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? 
** SNIP  for brevity** 
Setting up mongodb-org-shell (2.6.1) ...
Setting up mongodb-org-server (2.6.1) ...
Adding system user `mongodb' (UID 104) ...
Adding new user `mongodb' (UID 104) with group `nogroup' ...
Not creating home directory `/home/mongodb'.
Adding group `mongodb' (GID 107) ...
Done.
Adding user `mongodb' to group `mongodb' ...
Adding user mongodb to group mongodb
Done.
[ ok ] Starting database: mongod.
Setting up mongodb-org-mongos (2.6.1) ...
Setting up mongodb-org-tools (2.6.1) ...
Setting up mongodb-org (2.6.1) ...
root@deb7:~# mongo
MongoDB shell version: 2.6.1
connecting to: test
Welcome to the MongoDB shell.
For interactive help, type "help".
For more comprehensive documentation, see
    http://docs.mongodb.org/
Questions? Try the support group
    http://groups.google.com/group/mongodb-user
> use admin
switched to db admin
> db.createUser(
...   {
...     user: "adam",
...     pwd: "password123",
...     roles:
...     [
...       {
...         role: "userAdminAnyDatabase",
...         db: "admin"
...       }
...     ]
...   }
... )                           
Successfully added user: {
    "user" : "adam",
    "roles" : [
        {
            "role" : "userAdminAnyDatabase",
            "db" : "admin"
        }
    ]
}

Next up I edited the /etc/mongod.conf file and removed the # that commented out auth = true (I made no other changes). I saved that file and then restarted the service. Next I connected with the user I had added and verified that I had the right provileges:

root@deb7:~# vim /etc/mongod.conf 
root@deb7:~# service mongod restart
[ ok ] Restarting database: mongod.
root@deb7:~# mongo -u adam -p password123 --authenticationDatabase admin
MongoDB shell version: 2.6.1
connecting to: test
Error while trying to show server startup warnings: not authorized on admin to execute command { getLog: "startupWarnings" }

As you can see, the user I added does not have the privileges to look at the startup warnings, but just to be sure, I checked the privileges:

> use admin
switched to db admin
> db.runCommand(   {     usersInfo:"adam",     showPrivileges:true   } )
{
    "users" : [
        {
            "_id" : "admin.adam",
            "user" : "adam",
            "db" : "admin",
            "roles" : [
                {
                    "role" : "userAdminAnyDatabase",
                    "db" : "admin"
                }
            ],
            "inheritedRoles" : [
                {
                    "role" : "userAdminAnyDatabase",
                    "db" : "admin"
                }
            ],
            "inheritedPrivileges" : [
                {
                    "resource" : {
                        "db" : "",
                        "collection" : ""
                    },
                    "actions" : [
                        "changeCustomData",
                        "changePassword",
                        "createRole",
                        "createUser",
                        "dropRole",
                        "dropUser",
                        "grantRole",
                        "revokeRole",
                        "viewRole",
                        "viewUser"
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "resource" : {
                        "cluster" : true
                    },
                    "actions" : [
                        "authSchemaUpgrade",
                        "invalidateUserCache",
                        "listDatabases"
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "resource" : {
                        "db" : "",
                        "collection" : "system.users"
                    },
                    "actions" : [
                        "collStats",
                        "dbHash",
                        "dbStats",
                        "find",
                        "killCursors",
                        "planCacheRead"
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "resource" : {
                        "db" : "admin",
                        "collection" : "system.users"
                    },
                    "actions" : [
                        "collStats",
                        "dbHash",
                        "dbStats",
                        "find",
                        "killCursors",
                        "planCacheRead"
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "resource" : {
                        "db" : "admin",
                        "collection" : "system.roles"
                    },
                    "actions" : [
                        "collStats",
                        "dbHash",
                        "dbStats",
                        "find",
                        "killCursors",
                        "planCacheRead"
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "resource" : {
                        "db" : "admin",
                        "collection" : "system.version"
                    },
                    "actions" : [
                        "collStats",
                        "dbHash",
                        "dbStats",
                        "find",
                        "killCursors",
                        "planCacheRead"
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "resource" : {
                        "db" : "admin",
                        "collection" : "system.new_users"
                    },
                    "actions" : [
                        "collStats",
                        "dbHash",
                        "dbStats",
                        "find",
                        "killCursors",
                        "planCacheRead"
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "resource" : {
                        "db" : "admin",
                        "collection" : "system.backup_users"
                    },
                    "actions" : [
                        "collStats",
                        "dbHash",
                        "dbStats",
                        "find",
                        "killCursors",
                        "planCacheRead"
                    ]
                }
            ]
        }
    ],
    "ok" : 1
}                                        

Just for completeness, here's an auth failure:

root@deb7:~# mongo -u root -p 12345678 --authenticationDatabase admin
MongoDB shell version: 2.6.1
connecting to: test
2014-05-11T18:04:39.793+0100 Error: 18 { ok: 0.0, errmsg: "auth failed", code: 18 } at src/mongo/shell/db.js:1210
exception: login failed   

Edit /etc/mongod.conf and add a line like this:

For mongo <3.0

auth=true

Then:

service mongod restart

For mongo 3.x, Add this to the config

security:
  authorization: "enabled"