How To Install Apache CouchDB on Debian 10 Buster

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Apache CouchDB on Debian 10. For those of you who didn’t know, CouchDB is an open-source project and NoSQL, document-oriented database server.  It has a document-oriented NoSQL database architecture and is implemented in the concurrency-oriented language Erlang; it uses JSON to store data, JavaScript as its query language using MapReduce, and HTTP for an API.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Apache CouchDB on a Debian 10 (Buster) server.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 10 (Buster).
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Apache CouchDB on Debian 10 Buster

Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt commands in the terminal:

apt update
apt upgrade

Step 2. Installing Dependencies.

First, Install all required dependencies to build CouchDB on Debian 10:

sudo apt --no-install-recommends -y install build-essential pkg-config erlang libicu-dev libmozjs185-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev

Step 3. Create a CouchDB user for CouchDB.

Create a CouchDB system user to run the CouchDB service:

sudo adduser --system \
        --shell /bin/bash \
        --group --gecos \
        "CouchDB Administrator" couchdb

Step 4. Installing Apache CouchDB on Debian.

First, download the latest stable release of the CouchDB database archive.:

curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/apache/couchdb/releases/latest \
  | grep browser_download_url \
  | cut -d '"' -f 4 \
  | wget -qi -

Run the following command to build CouchDB on Debian 10:

tar xvf apache-couchdb-*.tar.gz
cd apache-couchdb-*/
./configure
make release

To install CouchDB into your system, copy the rel/couchdb to your desired installation location:

sudo cp -r rel/couchdb /home/couchdb
sudo chown -R couchdb:couchdb /home/couchdb/

Change the permission of the CouchDB directories:

find /home/couchdb -type d -exec chmod 0770 {} \;
chmod 0644 /home/couchdb/couchdb/etc/*

Step 5. Configure CouchDB Systemd.

We need to create a CouchDB systemd service:

sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/couchdb.service<<EOF
[Unit]
Description=Couchdb service
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=couchdb
ExecStart=/home/couchdb/couchdb/bin/couchdb -o /dev/stdout -e /dev/stderr
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

Reload systemd daemon:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start couchdb.service
sudo systemctl enable couchdb.service

Step 6. Accessing Apache CouchDB.

Apache CouchDB will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://your-ip-address:5984/_utils and complete the required steps to finish the installation.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed CouchDB. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Apache CouchDB on your Debian 10 Buster system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Apache CouchDB website.