Install RethinkDB on Debian

Looking for another platform? See the complete list of platforms RethinkDB supports.

With binaries

We provide binaries for 64-bit Debian versions.

To install the server, you have to add the repository to your list of repositories and install via apt-get. To do this, paste the following lines into your terminal:

# Download the public key.
wget -qO- https://download.rethinkdb.com/repository/raw/pubkey.gpg | \
    sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/rethinkdb-archive-keyrings.gpg

# Add the repository.
cat <<EOD | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rethinkdb.sources
Types: deb
URIs: https://download.rethinkdb.com/repository/debian-$(lsb_release -cs)/
Suites: $(lsb_release -cs)
Components: main
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/rethinkdb-archive-keyrings.gpg
EOD

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rethinkdb

# Check installation.
rethinkdb --version

Earlier Debian versions

As of Debian Trixie, apt-key is no longer available.

export CODENAME=`lsb_release -cs`
echo "deb https://download.rethinkdb.com/repository/debian-$CODENAME $CODENAME main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rethinkdb.list
wget -qO- https://download.rethinkdb.com/repository/raw/pubkey.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rethinkdb

If you followed the above instructions before July 2017 and want to upgrade to a newer version of RethinkDB, you will need to first download the new key (0742918E5C8DA04A):

$ wget -qO- https://download.rethinkdb.com/repository/raw/pubkey.gpg | sudo apt-key add -v -

Compile from source

Get the build dependencies

Install the dependencies (use python on older systems – Python 2 works):

sudo apt-get install build-essential protobuf-compiler \
                     python3 python-is-python3 \
                     libprotobuf-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev \
                     libboost-all-dev m4 g++ libssl-dev \
                     libjemalloc-dev

Get the source code

Download and extract the archive:

wget https://download.rethinkdb.com/repository/raw/dist/rethinkdb-2.4.4.tgz
tar xf rethinkdb-2.4.4.tgz

Build the server

Kick off the build process:

cd rethinkdb-2.4.4
./configure --allow-fetch --fetch boost
make -j8
sudo make install

Next steps: Now that you’ve installed RethinkDB, it’s time to install client drivers for your language.