• Security >
• Security Tutorials >
• User and Role Management Tutorials >
• Create a Role

Create a Role

Overview

Roles grant users access to MongoDB resources. By default, MongoDB provides a number of built-in roles that administrators may use to control access to a MongoDB system. However, if these roles cannot describe the desired set of privileges, you can create a new, customized role in a particular database.

Except for roles created in the admin database, a role can only include privileges that apply to its database and can only inherit from other roles in its database.

A role created in the admin database can include privileges that apply to the admin database, other databases or to the cluster resource, and can inherit from roles in other databases as well as the admin database.

MongoDB uses the combination of the database name and the role name to uniquely define a role.

Prerequisites

To create a role in a database, the user must have:

• the createRole action on that database resource.
• the grantRole action on that database to specify privileges for the new role as well as to specify roles to inherit from.

Built-in roles userAdmin and userAdminAnyDatabase provide createRole and grantRole actions on their respective resources.

Procedures

To create a new role, use the db.createRole() method, specifying the privileges in the privileges array and the inherited roles in the roles array.

Create a Role to Manage Current Operations

The following example creates a role named manageOpRole which provides only the privileges to run both db.currentOp() and db.killOp(). [1]

1

Connect to MongoDB with the appropriate privileges.

Connect to mongod or mongos with the privileges specified in the Prerequisites section.

The following procedure uses the siteUserAdmin created in Create a User Administrator.

copy

mongo --port 27017 -u siteUserAdmin -p password --authenticationDatabase admin

The siteUserAdmin has privileges to create roles in the admin as well as other databases.

2

Create a new role to manage current operations.

manageOpRole has privileges that act on multiple databases as well as the cluster resource. As such, you must create the role in the admin database.

copy

use admin
db.createRole(
   {
     role: "manageOpRole",
     privileges: [
       { resource: { cluster: true }, actions: [ "killop", "inprog" ] },
       { resource: { db: "", collection: "" }, actions: [ "killCursors" ] }
     ],
     roles: []
   }
)

The new role grants permissions to kill any operations.

Warning

Terminate running operations with extreme caution. Only use db.killOp() to terminate operations initiated by clients and do not terminate internal database operations.

[1]	The built-in role clusterMonitor also provides the privilege to run db.currentOp() along with other privileges, and the built-in role hostManager provides the privilege to run db.killOp() along with other privileges.

Create a Role to Run mongostat

The following example creates a role named mongostatRole that provides only the privileges to run mongostat. [2]

1

Connect to MongoDB with the appropriate privileges.

Connect to mongod or mongos with the privileges specified in the Prerequisites section.

The following procedure uses the siteUserAdmin created in Create a User Administrator.

copy

mongo --port 27017 -u siteUserAdmin -p password --authenticationDatabase admin

The siteUserAdmin has privileges to create roles in the admin as well as other databases.

2

Create a new role to manage current operations.

mongostatRole has privileges that act on the cluster resource. As such, you must create the role in the admin database.

copy

use admin
db.createRole(
   {
     role: "mongostatRole",
     privileges: [
       { resource: { cluster: true }, actions: [ "serverStatus" ] }
     ],
     roles: []
   }
)

[2]	The built-in role clusterMonitor also provides the privilege to run mongostat along with other privileges.

←   Create an Administrative User with Unrestricted Access Assign a User a Role  →

© MongoDB, Inc 2008-present. MongoDB, Mongo, and the leaf logo are registered trademarks of MongoDB, Inc.