Configuration file options

The .conf file includes a number of options exclusively for the init script. The rest of the options are exactly the same as the ones that go on the command line to the RethinkDB server. For more details about these options run rethinkdb help.

The configuration file’s location depends on the startup system your distribution uses. A configuration file may also be specified on the command line with the --config-file option.

Format

A sample .conf file is available with full comments. (It may already be installed on your distribution as default.conf.sample.)

The file uses a simple format of key=value, with one key specified per line. A simple configuration file that uses the default ports, assigns a server to a virtual group using server tags and joins an existing cluster might be:

server-name=Kismet
server-tag=default
server-tag=fremont_ca
join=layered:29015
daemon

Supported options

For some options below, the default value depends on <name>, the name of the config file without the .conf extension.

• runuser and rungroup: specifies which user and group should be used launch the Rethinkdb process.
  Default: rethinkdb and rethinkdb.

• pid-file: the location of the file with the RethinkDB instance process ID (used by the init script to communicate with the server process).
  Default: /var/run/rethinkdb/<name>/pid_file

• directory: the data directory where database tables will be stored. This location must be readable and writable by the user or group (or both) specified by runuser and rungroup.
  Note: It is best to create the database manually via rethinkdb create --directory ... as runuser or rungroup before enabling auto-start.
  Default: /var/lib/rethinkdb/<name>/

• log-file: path to the log file.
  Default: <directory>/log_file

• bind: Address of local interfaces to listen on when accepting connections. May be ‘all’ or an IP address, loopback addresses are enabled by default.
  Default: all local addresses

• bind-http: Similar to bind, but only for the web UI connection port. This option will override bind for this port if both are specified in the configuration file.

• bind-cluster: Similar to bind, but only for the cluster connection port. This option will override bind for this port if both are specified in the configuration file.

• bind-driver: Similar to bind, but only for the client driver connection port. This option will override bind for this port if both are specified in the configuration file.

• http-tls-key: the filename of a private key to use with TLS for the web administration console. Both http-tls-key and http-tls-cert must be specified.

• http-tls-cert: the filename of a TLS certificate to use for the web administration console. Both http-tls-key and http-tls-cert must be specified.

• driver-tls-key: the filename of a private key to use with TLS for client driver connections. Both driver-tls-key and driver-tls-cert must be specified.

• driver-tls-cert: the filename of a TLS certificate to use for client driver connections. Both driver-tls-key and driver-tls-cert must be specified.

• driver-tls-ca: the filename of a CA certificate bundle to use for verifying client driver connections. If specified, the server will only accept connections from clients that provide a certificate signed with the CA certificate.

• cluster-tls-key: the filename of a private key to use with TLS for cluster connections. All three cluster-tls-* configurations must be specified.

• cluster-tls-cert: the filename of a TLS certificate to use for cluster connections. All three cluster-tls-* configurations must be specified.

• cluster-tls-ca: the filename of a CA certificate to use for verifying cluster connections. All three cluster-tls-* configurations must be specified.

• tls-min-protocol: the minimum TLS protocol version the server accepts, one of TLSv1, TLSv1.1, TLSv1.2.
  Default: TLSv1.2

• tls-ciphers: A list of TLS ciphers to use.
  Default: EECDH+AESGCM

• tls-ecdh-curve: A named elliptic curve to use for ECDHE.
  Default: prime256v1

• tls-dhparams: A filename containing parameters for DHE key agreement; this is required if using DHE cipher suites, and unused otherwise. At least a 2048-bit key is recommended.

• canonical-address: Address that other rethinkdb instances will use to connect to this machine. The address must be specified as host:port if the instance uses a port other than 29015. This option can be specified multiple times.

• http-port, driver-port, and cluster-port: the web UI port (default 8080), the client driver port (default 28015), and intracluster traffic port (default 29015), respectively.

• join: The host:port of a node that Rethinkdb will connect to. It can be specified multiple times.

• port-offset All ports used locally will have this value added.
  Default: 0

• no-http-admin: Disable web administration console.

• cores: Number of cores to use.
  Default: Number of cores of the CPU.

• cache-size: Size of the cache in MB.
  Default: Half of the available RAM on startup.

• io-threads: Number of simultaneous I/O operations can happen at the same time.
  Default: 64

• direct-io: Use direct I/O for file system access.

• server-name: The name for this machine (as it will appear in the metadata).
  Default: Randomly chosen from a short list of names.

• server-tag: Specifies tags for this server, which can be used to group servers together for administration purposes (for instance, servers in the same data center). See Sharding and replication for more details. To assign multiple tags to a server, repeat server-tag lines for each tag.

• cluster-reconnect-timeout: the amount of time, in seconds, this server will try to reconnect to a cluster if it loses connection before giving up.
  Default: 86400