Managing Your Configuration

Retrieving a Configuration Listing

Note: This command has been deprecated in Riak KV 3.2.0 onwards and will no longer function.

At any time, you can get a snapshot of currently applied configurations through the command line. For a listing of all of the configs currently applied in the node:

riak config effective

This will output a long list of the following form:

anti_entropy = active
anti_entropy.bloomfilter = on
anti_entropy.concurrency_limit = 2
# and so on

For detailed information about a particular configuration variable, use the config describe <variable> command. This command will output a description of what the parameter configures, which datatype you should use to set the parameter (integer, string, enum, etc.), the default value of the parameter, the currently set value in the node, and the name of the parameter in app.config in older versions of Riak (if applicable).

For in-depth information about the ring_size variable, for example:

riak config describe ring_size

This will output the following:

Documentation for ring_size
Number of partitions in the cluster (only valid when first
creating the cluster). Must be a power of 2, minimum 8 and maximum
1024.

   Datatype     : [integer]
   Default Value: 64
   Set Value    : undefined
   app.config   : riak_core.ring_creation_size

Checking Your Configuration

The riak command line tool has a chkconfig command that enables you to determine whether the syntax in your configuration files is correct.

riak chkconfig

If your configuration files are syntactically sound, you should see the output config is OK followed by a listing of files that were checked. You can safely ignore this listing. If, however, something is syntactically awry, you’ll see an error output that provides details about what is wrong.

The error message will specify which configurable parameters are syntactically unsound and attempt to provide an explanation why.

Please note that the chkconfig command only checks for syntax. It will not be able to discern if your configuration is otherwise unsound, e.g. if your configuration will cause problems on your operating system or doesn’t activate subsystems that you would like to use.

Debugging Your Configuration

Note: This command has been deprecated in Riak KV 3.2.0 onwards and will no longer function.

If there is a problem with your configuration but you’re having trouble identifying the problem, there is a command that you can use to debug your configuration:

riak config generate -l debug

If there are issues with your configuration, you will see detailed output that might provide a better sense of what has gone wrong in the config generation process.