memgraph/docs/user_technical/installation.md

Installation

Memgraph is a 64-bit Linux compatible database management system. For the purpose of Alpha testing Memgraph has been packed into a Docker image based on Ubuntu 16.04. Before proceeding with the installation, please install the Docker engine on your system. Instructions how to install Docker can be found on the official Docker website. Memgraph Docker image was built with Docker version 1.12 and should be compatible with all latter versions.

Docker Import

After a successful download the Memgraph Docker image can be imported into Docker:

docker load -i /path/to/memgraph_alpha_v0.5.0.tar.gz

Image Configuration & Running Memgraph

Memgraph can be started by executing:

docker run -it -p 7687:7687 memgraph_alpha_v0.5.0

The -it option enables displaying Memgraph's logs inside the current shell. The -p option is used to specify the port on which Memgraph will listen for requests. Memgraph uses the Bolt protocol for network communication, which uses port 7687 by default.

It is recommended to perform some additional Docker configuration. Memgraph is currently an in-memory database management system, but it periodically stores all data to the hard drive. These storages are referred to as snapshots and are used for recovering data in case of a restart. When starting Memgraph, a folder for snapshots needs to be created and mounted on the host file system. It is also recommended to run the Docker container in the background. On a Linux system all of that can be achieved with the following shell commands:

# Create the snapshots folder on the host.
mkdir -p memgraph
# Docker expects full path to the created folder.
FULL_OUTPUT_PATH=$PWD/memgraph
# Run Memgraph.
docker run -d -p 7687:7687 -v ${FULL_OUTPUT_PATH}:/var/lib/memgraph --name <memgraph_docker_container_name> memgraph_alpha_v0.5.0

In the commands above -d means that the container will be detached (run in the background). -v mounts a host folder to a path inside the Docker container. The output folder contains Memgraph's periodical snapshots and log file. The log file should be uploaded to Memgraph's issue tracking system in case of an error. With --name a custom name for the container can be set (useful for easier container management). <memgraph_docker_container_name> could be any convenient name e.g. memgraph_alpha.

Memgraph Configuration Parameters

Memgraph can be configured with a number of command-line parameters. The parameters should be appended to the end of the docker run command in the --param-name=param-value format. Following is a list of available parameters:

Name	Type	Default	Description
--port	integer	7687	Communication port on which to listen.
--num-workers	integer	CPU count1	Number of Memgraph worker threads.
--snapshot-cycle-sec	integer	300	Interval (seconds) between database snapshots. Value of -1 turns taking snapshots off.
--max-retained-snapshots	integer	3	Number of retained snapshots. Value -1 means without limit.
--snapshot-on-db-exit	bool	false	Make a snapshot when closing Memgraph.
--recover-on-startup	bool	false	Recover the database on startup using the last stored snapshot.

To find more about how to execute queries on Memgraph please proceed to Quick Start.

Cleanup

Status and Memgraph's logging messages can be checked with:

docker ps -a
docker logs -f <memgraph_docker_container_name>

Memgraph and its Docker container can be stopped with:

docker stop <memgraph_docker_container_name>

After the container has stopped, it can be removed by executing:

docker rm <memgraph_docker_container_name>

---

1. Maximum number of concurrent executions on the current CPU. ↩︎