Create user for all databases in MongoDB

Question

How can I create a user and grant it read-only access for all databases available in MongoDB (2.2/2.4/2.6) instance?

I am new to MongoDB, please provide the detailed, step-by-step process.

Answer 1

Upgrade to any one of recent MongoDB versions and then it's very easy follow the below steps:

1. Enable authentication on the /etc/mongod.conf file

 security:
 authorization: enabled

2. Create a read user on admin DB, since you want to access all DBs. If specific DB then create on that specific db

use admin 

 db.createUser( 
 {
 user: "read_admin",
 pwd: "yourpassword", 
 roles: [ { role: "readAnyDatabase", db: "admin" } ] 
 } )

3. Restart the MongoDB service

sudo service mongod restart

4. Login into the mongo shell and check the user

mongo -u read_admin --authenticationDatabase admin

Answer 2

Here are the steps to enable authorization, and create the user with the readAnyDatabase access for the MongoDB v2.4 deployment.

• Enable Authentication
• Create a User Administrator
• Add a User to a Database - in this step, create a user with read-only access for all databases with the role readAnyDatabase - this role provides users with the ability to read data from any collection, from all logical databases in the MongoDB environment.

As an example, you can try the following tutorial from MongoDB v4.2 documentation. This tutorial Enable Access Control steps are the similar to that of the version 2.4 you want to work with. Note that, some commands, like createUser is addUserin v2.4, have different syntax - please be mindful of that.