# 2.4. Installation on FreeBSD

## 2.4.1. Installation from ports

    cd /usr/ports/databases/couchdb
    make install clean

This will install CouchDB from the ports collection.

### Start script

The following options for `/etc/rc.conf` or `/etc/rc.conf.local` are supported by the start script (defaults shown):

    couchdb_enable="NO"
    couchdb_enablelogs="YES"
    couchdb_user="couchdb"

After enabling the couchdb rc service use the following command to start CouchDB:

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

This script responds to the arguments start, stop, status, rcvar etc..

The start script will also use settings from the following config files:

- /usr/local/etc/couchdb/default.ini
- /usr/local/etc/couchdb/local.ini

Administrators should use `default.ini` as reference and only modify the `local.ini` file.

### Post install

Be sure to complete the First-time Setup steps for a single node or clustered installation.

In case the install script fails to install a non-interactive user “couchdb” to be used for the database, the user needs to be created manually:

I used the `pw` command to add a user “couchdb” in group “couchdb”:

    pw user add couchdb
    pw user mod couchdb -c 'CouchDB, time to relax' -s /usr/sbin/nologin -d /var/lib/couchdb
    pw group add couchdb

The user is added to `/etc/passwd` and should look similar to the following:

    shell#  grep couchdb /etc/passwd
    couchdb:*:1013:1013:Couchdb, time to relax:/var/lib/couchdb/:/usr/sbin/nologin

To change any of these settings, please refrain from editing /etc/passwd and instead use `pw user mod ...` or `vipw`. Make sure that the user has no shell, but instead uses `/usr/sbin/nologin`. The ‘*’ in the second field means that this user can not login via password authorization. For details use man 5 passwd.