Just installed it on FreeBSD 10.3. Fetched and unpacked the source tarball, then did mostly what the INSTALL.Unix.md said to do; sudo pkg install erlang icu

Just installed it on FreeBSD 10.3. Fetched and unpacked the source tarball, then did mostly what the INSTALL.Unix.md said to do; sudo pkg install erlang icu spidermonkey185 gmake gcc curl help2man py27-sphinx ./configure gmake release sudo pw useradd couchdb -u 5984 -c "CouchDB Administrator" -L daemon -s /usr/local/bin/bash sudo cp -R rel/couchdb /home/couchdb sudo chown -R couchdb:couchdb /home/couchdb sudo find /home/couchdb -type d -exec chmod 0770 {} \; sudo find /home/couchdb/etc/ -type f -exec chmod 0644 {} \; Note how I set the uid to 5984 ;) Unfortunately, when I try to actually run it... sudo -i -u couchdb ~couchdb/bin/couchdb ...I'm just getting messages like: [error] 2016-09-20T23:57:55.321596Z couchdb@localhost emulator -------- Error in process <0.547.0> on node couchdb@localhost with exit value: {database_does_not_exist,[{mem3_shards,load_shards_from_db,"_users", [{file,"src/mem3_shards.erl"},{line,327}]},{mem3_shards,load_shards_from_disk,1, [{file,"src/mem3_shards.erl"},{line,315}]},{mem3_shards,load_shards_from_disk,2, [{file,"src/mem3_shards.erl"},{line,331}]},{mem3_shards,for_docid,3, [{file,"src/mem3_shards.erl"},{line,87}]},{fabric_doc_open,go,3, [{file,"src/fabric_doc_open.erl"},{line,38}]}, {chttpd_auth_cache,ensure_auth_ddoc_exists,2, [{file,"src/chttpd_auth_cache.erl"},{line,187}]}, {chttpd_auth_cache,listen_for_changes,1, [{file,"src/chttpd_auth_cache.erl"},{line,134}]}]} [notice] 2016-09-20T23:57:55.321650Z couchdb@localhost <0.323.0> -------- chttpd_auth_cache changes listener died database_does_not_exist at mem3_shards:load_shards_from_db/6(line:327) <= mem3_shards:load_shards_from_disk/1(line:315) <= mem3_shards:load_shards_from_disk/2(line:331) <= mem3_shards:for_docid/3(line:87) <= fabric_doc_open:go/3(line:38) <= chttpd_auth_cache:ensure_auth_ddoc_exists/2(line:187) <= chttpd_auth_cache:listen_for_changes/1(line:134)