Why getting error mongod dead but subsys locked and Insufficient free space for journal files on Linux?

You can add following to the config file provided when running mongod --config mongod.conf

For MongoDB 3.x (latest version)

storage:   mmapv1:      smallFiles: true

For version 2.6+

storage:   smallFiles: true

For version 2.4 and less

smallfiles = true

Then just execute mongod to accept your config file (here it assumes that location of the config is /etc/mongodb.conf):

mongod -f /etc/mongodb.conf

Documentation for smallfiles parameter:

Set to true to modify MongoDB to use a smaller default data file size. Specifically, smallfiles reduces the initial size for data files andlimits them to 512 megabytes. The smallfiles setting also reduces thesize of each journal files from 1 gigabyte to 128 megabytes.

Start mongod instance using following command

mongod --dbpath /data/db --smallfiles

I was following the official guide at http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb-on-ubuntu/

After using

$sudo service mongod start

I went to verify if MongoDB had started successfully by reviewing this log:

/var/log/mongodb/mongod.log

This is the problem that I found:

2014-11-11T12:54:05.808-0500 [initandlisten] ERROR: Insufficient free space for journal files2014-11-11T12:54:05.808-0500 [initandlisten] Please make at least 3379MB available in /var/lib/mongodb/journal or use --smallfiles2014-11-11T12:54:05.808-0500 [initandlisten]2014-11-11T12:54:05.808-0500 [initandlisten] exception in initAndListen: 15926 Insufficient free space for journals, terminating2014-11-11T12:54:05.808-0500 [initandlisten] dbexit:2014-11-11T12:54:05.808-0500 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close listening sockets...2014-11-11T12:54:05.808-0500 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to flush diaglog...2014-11-11T12:54:05.808-0500 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close sockets...2014-11-11T12:54:05.808-0500 [initandlisten] shutdown: waiting for fs preallocator...2014-11-11T12:54:05.808-0500 [initandlisten] shutdown: lock for final commit...2014-11-11T12:54:05.808-0500 [initandlisten] shutdown: final commit...2014-11-11T12:54:05.808-0500 [initandlisten] shutdown: closing all files...2014-11-11T12:54:05.808-0500 [initandlisten] closeAllFiles() finished2014-11-11T12:54:05.808-0500 [initandlisten] journalCleanup...2014-11-11T12:54:05.808-0500 [initandlisten] removeJournalFiles2014-11-11T12:54:05.814-0500 [initandlisten] shutdown: removing fs lock...2014-11-11T12:54:05.814-0500 [initandlisten] dbexit: really exiting now

Solution:

At the end of the file /etc/mongod.conf I added this line:

smallfiles = true

After that, I restarted the mongod service:

$sudo service mongod restart

Then when I went to review the log, I realized that everything was perfect, and the problem was fixed:

2014-11-11T22:32:20.544-0500 ***** SERVER RESTARTED *****2014-11-11T22:32:20.552-0500 [initandlisten] MongoDB starting : pid=5200 port=27017 dbpath=/var/lib/mongodb 64-bit host=jaimemontoya-VirtualBox2014-11-11T22:32:20.552-0500 [initandlisten] db version v2.6.52014-11-11T22:32:20.552-0500 [initandlisten] git version: e99d4fcb4279c0279796f237aa92fe3b64560bf62014-11-11T22:32:20.552-0500 [initandlisten] build info: Linux build8.nj1.10gen.cc 2.6.32-431.3.1.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Jan 3 21:39:27 UTC 2014 x86_64 BOOST_LIB_VERSION=1_492014-11-11T22:32:20.552-0500 [initandlisten] allocator: tcmalloc2014-11-11T22:32:20.552-0500 [initandlisten] options: { config: "/etc/mongod.conf", net: { bindIp: "127.0.0.1" }, storage: { dbPath: "/var/lib/mongodb", smallFiles: true }, systemLog: { destination: "file", logAppend: true, path: "/var/log/mongodb/mongod.log" } }2014-11-11T22:32:20.564-0500 [initandlisten] journal dir=/var/lib/mongodb/journal2014-11-11T22:32:20.564-0500 [initandlisten] recover : no journal files present, no recovery needed2014-11-11T22:32:20.738-0500 [initandlisten] waiting for connections on port 270172014-11-11T22:33:20.748-0500 [clientcursormon] mem (MB) res:36 virt:2452014-11-11T22:33:20.748-0500 [clientcursormon]  mapped (incl journal view):642014-11-11T22:33:20.748-0500 [clientcursormon]  connections:0