Unable to change the dbpath in mongodb through mongodb.conf

Question

I am getting the following message
exception in initAndListen std::exception: boost::filesystem::exists: Permission denied: "/vol/mongodb", terminating

in /var/log/mongodb/mongodb.log

ls -al /vol/mongodb gives -
drwxrwxrwx 2 mongodb mongodb 4096 2011-08-07 12:10 ./

When I change the dbpath, back to the default, which is /var/lib/mongodb - it works fine.

How do I solve this?

I'm assuming you are using a service to start mongodb? If so, does the owner of the **service** have the correct rights to that folder? — Justin Jenkins, Aug 08 '11 at 06:05
Yes, I am using the service but how do I check the owner of the service? thanks. — zubinmehta, Aug 08 '11 at 06:58
@cdf No. I tried passing the dbpath argument while starting the server itself and that works so didn't explore more — zubinmehta, Jan 18 '12 at 09:06

score 9 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 18 '12 at 17:42

I had the same problem initially and found it was caused by the mongodb user not having appropriate permissions on the parent directory.

I'd recommend checking /vol to ensure that the mongodb user can at least read files from that directory. May also need execute permissions too, and I suspect this will hold for each subsequent parent directory up to root.

Unable to change the dbpath in mongodb through mongodb.conf

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