MongoDB: log mongod to stdout

Question

I have been running MongoDB on my home laptop for awhile now. running mongod outputs to stdout as it should. super...

I just installed it on my work laptop but it is logging to a file.

$ sudo mongod
all output going to: /usr/local/var/log/mongodb/mongo.log

MongoDB should by default be logging to stdout according to the docs. This installation of mongoDB was done via home brew. Why is mongod logging to a file, and how do i get it to log to stdout instead?

Answer 1

If you run cat `which mongod` you can see that the Ruby wrapper around the mongod binary appends the default config if the --config arguments isn't passed.

ARGV << '--config' << '/usr/local/etc/mongod.conf' unless ARGV.find { |arg| arg =~ /--config/ }
exec "/usr/local/Cellar/mongodb/2.2.3-x86_64/mongod", *ARGV

The default config contains the following

# Store data in /usr/local/var/mongodb instead of the default /data/db
dbpath = /usr/local/var/mongodb

# Append logs to /usr/local/var/log/mongodb/mongo.log
logpath = /usr/local/var/log/mongodb/mongo.log
logappend = true

# Only accept local connections
bind_ip = 127.0.0.1

as you can see both logappend and logpath is set. The logpath setting is normally None meaning /dev/stdout.

To the point. mongod --config false will output to STDOUT. That will run the mongod binary without a config. If that isn't ideal, change the config settings in /usr/local/etc/mongod.conf.