2.1 config files

[Peter Sagerson <ps...@ignorare.net>]

Hello,

I'm trying to get CouchDB 2.1 running on a FreeBSD server. As the 2.x series has not yet made it into ports, I'm just building it manually for the time being. I can mostly get it running this way, but integrating it into the system in a sensible way has not been very relaxing thus far.

The first thing I'd like to do is move the config files under /usr/local/etc where they belong. The documentation explains the use of -couch_ini, which works as far as it goes, but when I do that, it appears that default.d and local.d are not included. Is that expected? Is there a way to relocate these as well?

Since I'm not (yet) trying to manhandle CouchDB into a package manager, I could just ignore this, but for one other quirk: couchdb likes to modify local.ini! Or sometimes one of the files in local.d, if I'm using the default config location. Does it pick a random local config file? Last in a lexical ordering? It's not clear. In any case, this is pretty disastrous for any system managed by deployment automation (e.g. SaltStack), as the two will be stepping all over each other. Is there a principled way to maintain an unambiguous distinction between files that I manage and files that couchdb manages?

Thanks,
Peter

Re: 2.1 config files

[Peter Sagerson <ps...@ignorare.net>]

Yup, that's the document I was referring to, thanks for the confirmation. I suppose it's just disorienting to have the model part ways with several conventions--FHS/hier, foo.d directories being implicitly or explicitly bound to parent configs, a clear distinction between static and dynamic configuration. I believe the documentation promises a more traditional configure/make system in a future release, so perhaps the situation is still in flux.

As surprising as an auto-mutating etc is, I agree that it shouldn't be hard to converge on a stable configuration state in the short term. Mostly it just has that feel of something high on the "most likely to create chaos in the future" list. To be safe, I reckon I'll at least want to disable access to the config-mutating APIs. Or maybe hook them up to the Benny Hill theme.

Thanks for the quick reply,
Peter


> On Oct 5, 2017, at 3:53 PM, Joan Touzet <wo...@apache.org> wrote:
> 
> This is all documented here:
> 
> http://docs.couchdb.org/en/2.1.0/config/intro.html
> 
> What you're experiencing is expected, given the override that you are
> using.
> 
> CouchDB abandoned the "install into FHS" Linux approach with the 2.x
> series when we started embedding the version of Erlang that we use into
> the release artefact that we build.
> 
> This is why all of the packages released to date install to the
> /opt/couchdb directory.
> 
> The best approach to managing CouchDB ini files when using a CD system
> (Salt, Ansible, Chef, Puppet) is to ensure that CouchDB doesn't need
> to rewrite any of the files when it starts up. This includes not using
> the /_node/<nodename>/_config endpoint, pre-seeding the correct server
> uuid and hashed passwords into the .ini file you drop on a system, etc.
> Done correctly, Couch will never have to write to an .ini file under
> normal operation. I've seen this successful in deployment with all of
> the above toolsets.
> 
> -Joan
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Peter Sagerson" <ps...@ignorare.net>
> To: user@couchdb.apache.org
> Sent: Thursday, 5 October, 2017 6:30:08 PM
> Subject: 2.1 config files
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I'm trying to get CouchDB 2.1 running on a FreeBSD server. As the 2.x series has not yet made it into ports, I'm just building it manually for the time being. I can mostly get it running this way, but integrating it into the system in a sensible way has not been very relaxing thus far.
> 
> The first thing I'd like to do is move the config files under /usr/local/etc where they belong. The documentation explains the use of -couch_ini, which works as far as it goes, but when I do that, it appears that default.d and local.d are not included. Is that expected? Is there a way to relocate these as well?
> 
> Since I'm not (yet) trying to manhandle CouchDB into a package manager, I could just ignore this, but for one other quirk: couchdb likes to modify local.ini! Or sometimes one of the files in local.d, if I'm using the default config location. Does it pick a random local config file? Last in a lexical ordering? It's not clear. In any case, this is pretty disastrous for any system managed by deployment automation (e.g. SaltStack), as the two will be stepping all over each other. Is there a principled way to maintain an unambiguous distinction between files that I manage and files that couchdb manages?
> 
> Thanks,
> Peter

Re: 2.1 config files

[Joan Touzet <wo...@apache.org>]

This is all documented here:

http://docs.couchdb.org/en/2.1.0/config/intro.html

What you're experiencing is expected, given the override that you are
using.

CouchDB abandoned the "install into FHS" Linux approach with the 2.x
series when we started embedding the version of Erlang that we use into
the release artefact that we build.

This is why all of the packages released to date install to the
/opt/couchdb directory.

The best approach to managing CouchDB ini files when using a CD system
(Salt, Ansible, Chef, Puppet) is to ensure that CouchDB doesn't need
to rewrite any of the files when it starts up. This includes not using
the /_node/<nodename>/_config endpoint, pre-seeding the correct server
uuid and hashed passwords into the .ini file you drop on a system, etc.
Done correctly, Couch will never have to write to an .ini file under
normal operation. I've seen this successful in deployment with all of
the above toolsets.

-Joan
 
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Sagerson" <ps...@ignorare.net>
To: user@couchdb.apache.org
Sent: Thursday, 5 October, 2017 6:30:08 PM
Subject: 2.1 config files

Hello,

I'm trying to get CouchDB 2.1 running on a FreeBSD server. As the 2.x series has not yet made it into ports, I'm just building it manually for the time being. I can mostly get it running this way, but integrating it into the system in a sensible way has not been very relaxing thus far.

The first thing I'd like to do is move the config files under /usr/local/etc where they belong. The documentation explains the use of -couch_ini, which works as far as it goes, but when I do that, it appears that default.d and local.d are not included. Is that expected? Is there a way to relocate these as well?

Since I'm not (yet) trying to manhandle CouchDB into a package manager, I could just ignore this, but for one other quirk: couchdb likes to modify local.ini! Or sometimes one of the files in local.d, if I'm using the default config location. Does it pick a random local config file? Last in a lexical ordering? It's not clear. In any case, this is pretty disastrous for any system managed by deployment automation (e.g. SaltStack), as the two will be stepping all over each other. Is there a principled way to maintain an unambiguous distinction between files that I manage and files that couchdb manages?

Thanks,
Peter