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Users

Create a User

On this page

  • MongoDB Atlas Limitations
  • Prerequisites
  • Procedure
  • Configure Database Users for MongoDB Atlas
  • Open the Add New Database User dialog.
  • Select Password.
  • Enter user information.
  • Assign privileges.
  • Optional: Specify the resources in the project that the user can access.
  • Optional: Save as temporary user.
  • Click Add User.
  • Configure Users for Self-Hosted Deployments
  • Connect and authenticate
  • Create additional users for your deployment
  • Connect to the instance and authenticate as myTester
  • Insert a document as myTester
  • Additional Examples
  • Username/Password Authentication
  • Kerberos Authentication
  • LDAP Authentication
  • x.509 Client Certificate Authentication
  • Next Steps

With access control enabled, users are required to identify themselves. You have to grant a user one or more roles. A role grants a user privileges to perform certain actions on MongoDB resources.

Each application and user of a MongoDB system should map to a distinct user. This principle of access isolation facilitates access revocation and ongoing user maintenance. To ensure a system of least privilege, only grant the minimal set of privileges required to a user.

The user information on this page applies to deployments hosted in all of the following environments unless specified otherwise:

  • MongoDB Atlas: The fully managed service for MongoDB deployments in the cloud

MongoDB Atlas Limitations

The following limitations apply only to deployments hosted in MongoDB Atlas. If any of these limits present a problem for your organization, contact Atlas support.

Prerequisites

To be able to create users, you need to:

For routine user creation, you must possess the following permissions:

The userAdmin and userAdminAnyDatabase built-in roles provide createUser and grantRole actions on their respective resources.

To create users for MongoDB Atlas, you must have Organization Owner or Project Owner access to MongoDB Atlas. These roles are unique to MongoDB Atlas and are separate from database users. To learn more, see Atlas User Roles.

Procedure

Note

The following procedures use SCRAM authentication. For additional information on other authentication mechanisms, see Additional Examples.

Configure Database Users for MongoDB Atlas

A MongoDB Atlas project can have users with different authentication methods.

You cannot change a user's authentication method after creating that user. To use an alternative authentication method, you must create a new user.

Configure database users for your MongoDB Atlas deployment who use SCRAM authentication:

The Atlas CLI uses the following commands to create new database users and X.509 certificates. The options you specify determine the authentication method.

To create a database user for your project using the Atlas CLI, run the following command:

atlas dbusers create [builtInRole]... [options]

To create a new Atlas-managed X.509 certificate for the specified database user using the Atlas CLI, run the following command:

atlas dbusers certs create [options]

To learn more about the syntax and parameters for the previous commands, see the Atlas CLI documentation for atlas dbusers create and atlas dbusers certs create.

Tip

See: Related Links

1

Open the Add New Database User dialog.

  1. In the Security section of the left navigation, click Database Access. The Database Users tab displays.

  2. Click Add New Database User.

2

Select Password.

In the Authentication Method section of the Add New Database User modal window, select the box labeled Password.

3

Enter user information.

Under Password Authentication, there are two text fields.

  1. Enter a username for the new user in the top text field.

  2. Enter a password for the new user in the lower text field.

To use a password auto-generated by MongoDB Atlas, click the Autogenerate Secure Password button.

4

Assign privileges.

Select the database user privileges. You can assign privileges to the new user in one or more of the following ways:

  • Select a built-in role from the Built-in Role dropdown menu. You can select one built-in role per database user within the Atlas UI. If you delete the default option, you can click Add Built-in Role to select a new built-in role.

  • If you have any custom roles defined, you can expand the Custom Roles section and select one or more roles from the Custom Roles dropdown menu. Click Add Custom Role to add more custom roles. You can also click the Custom Roles link to see the custom roles for your project.

  • Expand the Specific Privileges section and select one or more privileges from the Specific Privileges dropdown menu. Click Add Specific Privilege to add more privileges. This assigns the user specific privileges on individual databases and collections.

MongoDB Atlas can apply a built-in role, multiple custom roles, and multiple specific privileges to a single database user.

To remove an applied role or privilege, click Delete next to the role or privilege you wish to delete.

Note

MongoDB Atlas doesn't display the Delete icon next to your Built-in Role, Custom Role, or Specific Privilege selection if you selected only one option. You can delete the selected role or privilege once you apply another role or privilege.

For more information on authorization, see Role-Based Access Control and Built-in Roles.

5

Optional: Specify the resources in the project that the user can access.

By default, users can access all the clusters and federated database instances in the project. You can restrict access to specific clusters and federated database instances by performing both of the following steps:

  1. Toggle Restrict Access to Specific Clusters/Federated Database Instances to ON.

  2. Select the clusters and federated database instances to grant the user access to from the Grant Access To list.

6

Optional: Save as temporary user.

Toggle Temporary User to On and choose a time after which MongoDB Atlas can delete the user from the Temporary User Duration dropdown. You can select one of the following time periods for the user to exist:

  • 6 hours

  • 1 day

  • 1 week

In the Database Users tab, temporary users display the time remaining until MongoDB Atlas will delete the user. Once MongoDB Atlas deletes the user, any client or application that uses the temporary user's credentials loses access to the cluster.

7

Click Add User.

Configure Users for Self-Hosted Deployments

To configure database users for your self-hosted MongoDB Enterprise or MongoDB Community deployment, follow these steps:

1

Connect and authenticate

Using mongosh, connect to your primary mongod or, in a sharded cluster, connect to your mongos and authenticate as a user administrator or a user with the required privileges:

Start mongosh with the -u <username>, -p, and the --authenticationDatabase <database> command line options:

mongosh --port 27017  --authenticationDatabase \
    "admin" -u "myUserAdmin" -p

Enter your password when prompted.

Using mongosh, connect to your database deployment:

mongosh --port 27017

In mongosh, switch to the authentication database (in this case, admin), and use the db.auth(<username>, <pwd>) method to authenticate:

use admin
db.auth("myUserAdmin", passwordPrompt()) // or cleartext password

Tip

The passwordPrompt() method prompts you to enter the password. You can also specify your password directly as a string. We recommend to use the passwordPrompt() method to avoid the password being visible on your screen and potentially leaking the password to your shell history.

Enter the password when prompted.

2

Create additional users for your deployment

Note

The following step uses SCRAM authentication. For additional information on other authentication mechanisms, see Additional Examples.

After authenticating as the user administrator, use the db.createUser() method to create additional users. You can assign any built-in roles or user-defined roles to the users.

The following operation adds a user myTester to the test database who has the readWrite role in the test database as well as the read role in the reporting database.

use test
db.createUser(
  {
    user: "myTester",
    pwd:  passwordPrompt(),   // or cleartext password
    roles: [ { role: "readWrite", db: "test" },
             { role: "read", db: "reporting" } ]
  }
)

Tip

The passwordPrompt() method prompts you to enter the password. You can also specify your password directly as a string. We recommend to use the passwordPrompt() method to avoid the password being visible on your screen and potentially leaking the password to your shell history.

The database where you create the user (in this example, test) is that user's authentication database. Although the user authenticates to this database, the user can have roles in other databases. The user's authentication database does not limit the user's privileges.

After creating the additional users, exit mongosh.

3

Connect to the instance and authenticate as myTester

Important

It is not possible to switch between users in the same mongosh session. Authenticating as a different user means the session has the privileges of both authenticated users. To switch between users exit and relaunch mongosh.

After exiting mongosh as myUserAdmin, reconnect as myTester:

Start mongosh with the -u <username>, -p, and the --authenticationDatabase <database> command line options:

mongosh --port 27017 -u "myTester" \
    --authenticationDatabase "test" -p

Enter the password for the user when prompted.

Using mongosh, connect to your database deployment:

mongosh --port 27017

In mongosh, switch to the authentication database (in this case, admin), and use the db.auth(<username>, <pwd>) method to authenticate:

use test
db.auth("myTester", passwordPrompt())  // or cleartext password

Tip

The passwordPrompt() method prompts you to enter the password. You can also specify your password directly as a string. We recommend to use the passwordPrompt() method to avoid the password being visible on your screen and potentially leaking the password to your shell history.

Enter the password for the user when prompted.

4

Insert a document as myTester

As the user myTester, you have privileges to perform read and write operations in the test database (as well as perform read operations in the reporting database). Once authenticated as myTester, insert a document into a collection in the test database. For example, you can perform the following insert operation in the test database:

db.foo.insertOne( { x: 1, y: 1 } )

Tip

See also:

Manage Users and Roles

Additional Examples

Username/Password Authentication

The following operation creates a user in the reporting database with the specified name, password, and roles.

Tip

The passwordPrompt() method prompts you to enter the password. You can also specify your password directly as a string. We recommend to use the passwordPrompt() method to avoid the password being visible on your screen and potentially leaking the password to your shell history.

use reporting
db.createUser(
  {
    user: "reportsUser",
    pwd: passwordPrompt(),  // or cleartext password
    roles: [
       { role: "read", db: "reporting" },
       { role: "read", db: "products" },
       { role: "read", db: "sales" },
       { role: "readWrite", db: "accounts" }
    ]
  }
)

Kerberos Authentication

Users that authenticate to MongoDB using an external authentication mechanism, such as Kerberos, must be created in the $external database, which allows mongos or mongod to consult an external source for authentication.

To use Client Sessions and Causal Consistency Guarantees with $external authentication users (Kerberos, LDAP, or x.509 users), usernames cannot be greater than 10k bytes.

For Kerberos authentication, you must add the Kerberos principal as the username. You do not need to specify a password.

The following operation adds the Kerberos principal reportingapp@EXAMPLE.NET with read-only access to the records database:

use $external
db.createUser(
    {
      user: "reportingapp@EXAMPLE.NET",
      roles: [
         { role: "read", db: "records" }
      ]
    }
)

Tip

See also:

For more information about setting up Kerberos authentication for your MongoDB deployment, see the following tutorials:

LDAP Authentication

Users that authenticate to MongoDB using an external authentication mechanism, such as LDAP, must be created in the $external database, which allows mongos or mongod to consult an external source for authentication.

To use Client Sessions and Causal Consistency Guarantees with $external authentication users (Kerberos, LDAP, or x.509 users), usernames cannot be greater than 10k bytes.

For LDAP authentication, you must specify a username. You do not need to specify the password, as that is handled by the LDAP service.

The following operation adds the reporting user with read-only access to the records database:

use $external
db.createUser(
    {
      user: "reporting",
      roles: [
         { role: "read", db: "records" }
      ]
    }
)

Tip

See also:

For more information about setting up LDAP authentication for your MongoDB deployment, see the following tutorials:

To learn more about setting up LDAP authentication for MongoDB Atlas, see Add Database Users in the MongoDB Atlas documentation.

x.509 Client Certificate Authentication

Users that authenticate to MongoDB using an external authentication mechanism, such as x.509 Client Certificate Authentication, must be created in the $external database, which allows mongos or mongod to consult an external source for authentication.

To use Client Sessions and Causal Consistency Guarantees with $external authentication users (Kerberos, LDAP, or x.509 users), usernames cannot be greater than 10k bytes.

For x.509 Client Certificate authentication, you must add the value of the subject from the client certificate as a MongoDB user. Each unique x.509 client certificate corresponds to a single MongoDB user. You do not need to specify a password.

The following operation adds the client certificate subject CN=myName,OU=myOrgUnit,O=myOrg,L=myLocality,ST=myState,C=myCountry user with read-only access to the records database.

use $external
db.createUser(
    {
      user: "CN=myName,OU=myOrgUnit,O=myOrg,L=myLocality,ST=myState,C=myCountry",
      roles: [
         { role: "read", db: "records" }
      ]
    }
)

Tip

See also:

For more information about setting up x.509 Client Certificate authentication for your MongoDB deployment, see the following tutorials:

To learn more about setting up x.509 Client Certificate authentication for MongoDB Atlas, see Add Database Users in the MongoDB Atlas documentation.

Next Steps

To manage users, assign roles, and create custom roles for your self-hosted MongoDB Enterprise or MongoDB Community deployment, see Manage Users and Roles.

You can also manage users, assign roles, and create custom roles for your MongoDB Atlas deployment.

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Users