Configuration¶

Since Crate Data has sensible defaults, there is no configuration needed at all for basic operation.

Crate Data is mainly configured via a configuration file, which is located at config/crate.yml. The vanilla configuration file distributed with the package has all available settings as comments in it along with the according default value.

The location of the config file can be specified upon startup like this:

sh$ ./bin/crate -Des.config=/path/to/config.yml

Any option can be configured either by the config file or as system property. If using system properties the required prefix ‘es.’ will be ignored.

For example, configuring the cluster name by using system properties will work this way:

sh$ ./bin/crate -Des.cluster.name=cluster

This is exactly the same as setting the cluster name in the config file:

cluster.name = cluster

Settings will get applied in the following order where the latter one will overwrite the prior one:

internal defaults

system properties

options from config file

Hosts¶

Per default Crate Data will bind itself to the 0.0.0.0 address. If you want to change this behaviour, adjust the network.host setting.

This setting sets both the network.bind_host and network.publish_host values.

network.bind_host is 0.0.0.0 by default. This setting determines to which address crate should bind itself to. To only bind to localhost, set it to any local address or _local_.

The network.publish_host value is used by the crate node to publish its own address to the rest of the cluster. Per default it is the first non local address.

To explicitly bind crate to a specific interface use the interface name between underscores. For example _eth0_.

This resolves to the ip address of this interface. With _eth0:ipv{4,6}_ you explicitly listen on: an ipv6 or ipv4 address.

Ports¶

Per default Crate Data will listen to the first free port in the range of 4200-4300 for HTTP Requests. If there is no crate process already running on that machine, it will usually be 4200.

You can change the HTTP port range by adjusting the http.port setting.

For internal cluster communication crate uses TCP and listens on the first free port in the range of 4300-4400.

You can change the TCP port range by adjusting the transport.tcp.port setting.

Logging¶

Crate Data comes, out of the box, with Log4j 1.2.x. It tries to simplify log4j configuration by using YAML to configure it. The logging configuration file is at config/logging.yml.

The yaml file is used to prepare a set of properties used for logging configuration using the PropertyConfigurator but without the tediously repeating log4j prefix. Here is a small example of a working logging configuration:

rootLogger: INFO, console

logger:
  # log action execution errors for easier debugging
  action: DEBUG


appender:
  console:
    type: console
    layout:
      type: consolePattern
      conversionPattern: "[%d{ISO8601}][%-5p][%-25c] %m%n"

And here is a snippet of the generated properties ready for use with log4j. You get the point.

log4j.rootLogger=INFO, console

log4j.logger.action=DEBUG

log4j.appender.console=org.elasticsearch.common.logging.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.console.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.console.layout.conversionPattern=[%d{ISO8601}][%-5p][%-25c] %m%n

...