Installing couchdb on CentOS 5

Installing on CentOS 5 i386

(Note: COUCHDB-315 has an attached patch for the CouchDB README which adds instructions for RHEL 5.)

1. Install prerequisites. You will need EPEL for js and erlang (or build those from source).

yum install ncurses-devel openssl-devel icu libicu-devel js js-devel curl-devel erlang libtool gcc

You also require curl (7.19.7 worked for me).I had to build it locally though because of some weird libcomm_err.so missing dependency.

2. Install CouchDB

The configure line below is for 64-bit, adjust for your arch (or leave out --with-erlang if configure can find out for itself). You can use a release tarball instead of a checkout, in that case skip right to the ./confgure line.

svn checkout http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/couchdb/trunk couchdb
cd couchdb
./bootstrap
./configure --with-erlang=/usr/lib/erlang/usr/include && make && make install

3. Edit config file to suit

vi /usr/local/etc/couchdb/local.ini

4. Create user, modify ownership and permissions

Create the couchdb user:

adduser -r --home /usr/local/var/lib/couchdb -M --shell /bin/bash --comment "CouchDB Administrator" couchdb

See the README for additional chown and chmod commands to run.

5. Launch! In console:

sudo -u couchdb couchdb

or as daemon:

sudo /usr/local/etc/rc.d/couchdb start

6. Run as daemon on start-up:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/etc/rc.d/couchdb /etc/init.d/couchdb
sudo chkconfig --add couchdb