Getting familiar with ArangoDB

First of all download and install the corresponding RPM or Debian package or use homebrew on the MacOS X. See the installation manual for more details. In case you just want to experiment with ArangoDB you can use the online demo without installing ArangoDB locally.

For Linux

• Visit the official ArangoDB download page and download the correct package for your Linux distribution
• Install the package using your favorite package manager
• Start up the database server, normally this is done by executing /etc/init.d/arangod start. The exact command depends on your Linux distribution

For MacOS X

• Execute brew install arangodb
• And start the server using /usr/local/sbin/arangod &

For Microsoft Windows

• Visit the official ArangoDB download page and download the installer for Windows
• Start up the database server

After these steps there should be a running instance of _arangod_ - the ArangoDB database server.

unix> ps auxw | fgrep arangod
arangodb 14536 0.1 0.6 5307264 23464 s002 S 1:21pm 0:00.18 /usr/local/sbin/arangod

If there is no such process, check the log file /var/log/arangodb/arangod.log for errors. If you see a log message like

2012-12-03T11:35:29Z [12882] ERROR Database directory version (1) is lower than server version (1.2).
2012-12-03T11:35:29Z [12882] ERROR It seems like you have upgraded the ArangoDB binary. If this is what you wanted to do, please restart with the --upgrade option to upgrade the data in the database directory.
2012-12-03T11:35:29Z [12882] FATAL Database version check failed. Please start the server with the --upgrade option

make sure to start the server once with the --upgrade option.