Start a RethinkDB server

Want to start instances of RethinkDB on system startup? See Start RethinkDB at system startup to learn how to set up RethinkDB with init.d or systemd.

This document describes how to start RethinkDB from the command line in several configurations, from a single instance on one machine to multiple instances on multiple machines.

In this article

Starting the server

To start the first RethinkDB instance, run this command in your terminal:

$ rethinkdb
info: Creating directory /home/user/rethinkdb_data
info: Listening for intracluster connections on port 29015
info: Listening for client driver connections on port 28015
info: Listening for administrative HTTP connections on port 8080
info: Server ready

Note the port numbers you can use to access RethinkDB:

  • Use the intracluster port (29015 by default) to connect other nodes in the cluster to this node.
  • Point your browser to the HTTP connections port (8080 by default) to access the web interface.

For a complete list of options that can be passed to RethinkDB on the command line, read