Run a single-node, on-disk server

For the purposes of getting started with SurrealDB quickly, we will start a RocksDB database which persists data on the filesystem. This configuration is great for trying out the database and small deployments.

user@localhost % surreal start file:mydatabase.db

The default logging level for the database server is info, resulting in any informational logs to be output to the standard output. To control the logging verbosity, specify the --log argument. The following command starts the database with trace level logging, resulting in most logs being output to the terminal.

user@localhost % surreal start --log trace file:mydatabase.db

In order to keep SurrealDB secure, configure your initial root-level user by setting the --user and --pass command-line arguments. The following command starts the database with a top-level user named root with a password also set to root. The root user will be persisted in storage, which means you don't have to include the command line arguments next time you start SurrealDB.

user@localhost % surreal start --log trace --user root --pass root file:mydatabase.db

In order to change the default port that SurrealDB uses for web connections and from database clients you can use the --bind argument. The following command starts the database on port 8080.

user@localhost % surreal start --log trace --user root --pass root --bind 0.0.0.0:8080 file://path/to/mydatabase

After running the above command, you should see the SurrealDB server startup successfully.

user@localhost % surreal start --user root --pass root --bind 0.0.0.0:8080 file:mydatabase.db
2023-08-30T15:06:34.788739Z  INFO surreal::dbs: ✅🔒 Authentication is enabled 🔒✅
2023-08-30T15:06:34.788821Z  INFO surrealdb::kvs::ds: Starting kvs store in file:mydatabase.db
2023-08-30T15:06:34.788859Z  INFO surrealdb::kvs::ds: Started kvs store in file:mydatabase.db
2023-08-30T15:06:34.789222Z  INFO surrealdb::kvs::ds: Initial credentials were provided and no existing root-level users were found: create the initial user 'root'.
2023-08-30T15:06:35.205123Z  INFO surrealdb::node: Started node agent
2023-08-30T15:06:35.205827Z  INFO surrealdb::net: Started web server on 0.0.0.0:8080

For details on the start command, and all of the available configuration options and arguments, view the start command documentation.