Installation problems with CouchDB 1.6 on Ubuntu 15.10

Solution 1:

The answer lies in the init script that comes along with the default ubuntu package.

/etc/init.d/couchdb starting in Line 83

start_couchdb () {
    # Start Apache CouchDB as a background process.

    mkdir -p "$RUN_DIR"
    if test -n "$COUCHDB_USER"; then
        chown $COUCHDB_USER "$RUN_DIR"
    fi
    command="$COUCHDB -b"
    if test -n "$COUCHDB_STDOUT_FILE"; then
        command="$command -o $COUCHDB_STDOUT_FILE"
    fi
    if test -n "$COUCHDB_STDERR_FILE"; then
        command="$command -e $COUCHDB_STDERR_FILE"
    fi
    if test -n "$COUCHDB_RESPAWN_TIMEOUT"; then
        command="$command -r $COUCHDB_RESPAWN_TIMEOUT"
    fi
    run_command "$command" > /dev/null
}

I got myself the official ubuntu 15.10 vagrant box and installed the couchdb package, then edited /etc/couchdb/local.ini to bind the httpd to a different IP Adress and restarted the couchdb service via /etc/init.d/couchdb restart

Everything worked fine for me.

TL;DR use the init script /etc/init.d/couchdb to start/stop and restart couchdb