Configuration¶

The configuration for Icinga Notifications is twofold. The main configuration resides in the database, shared between the Icinga Notifications daemon and Icinga Notifications Web. However, as the Icinga Notifications daemon needs to know how to access this database and some further settings, it needs its own configuration as well.

This configuration may be a YAML file, environment variables, or both. Environment variables take precedence and override previously defined values from the configuration file.

The YAML configuration file is stored in /etc/icinga-notifications/config.yml. See config.example.yml for an example configuration.

The following subsections describe the configurations of the various modules. For the YAML configuration file, each option is written in lowercase, as shown in the tables. When using environment variables, the variable name is constructed by concatenating ICINGA_NOTIFICATIONS_, the module name in uppercase followed by an underscore, and the option name in uppercase. The hyphens in the names are to be replaced by underscores. For example, to set the database host, the ICINGA_NOTIFICATIONS_DATABASE_HOST environment variable is used.

Passwords can be set directly or stored in a separate file, referenced via the password_file YAML key or PASSWORD_FILE environment variable. Only one of these two options can be used.

Top Level Configuration¶

For YAML configuration, these options are on the top level, not part of a dictionary. For environment variables, each option is prefixed with ICINGA_NOTIFICATIONS_.

HTTP API Configuration¶

The HTTP API listener can be used both for submission and for debugging purposes.

Option	Description
listen	Address to bind to, port included. (Example: `localhost:5680`)
debug-password	Password expected via HTTP Basic Authentication for debug endpoints.
debug-password_file	`debug-password` in a file.

Icinga Web 2¶

The icingaweb2-url is expected to point to the base directory of your Icinga Web 2 installation, i.e., https://example.com/icingaweb2/, to be used for URL creation.

Channels Directory¶

All available Icinga Notifications channels should reside in the channels-dir directory. For a package installation, the default will point to the correct location and must not be changed.

This directory should be /usr/libexec/icinga-notifications/channels on systems that follow the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. It may also be /usr/lib/icinga-notifications/channels, depending on the operating system conventions.

Database Configuration¶

Connection configuration for the database where Icinga Notifications stores configuration and historical data. This is also the database used in Icinga Notifications Web to view and work with the data.

For YAML configuration, the options are part of the database dictionary. For environment variables, each option is prefixed with ICINGA_NOTIFICATIONS_DATABASE_.

Option	Description
type	Optional. Either `mysql` (default) or `pgsql`.
host	Required. Database host or absolute Unix socket path.
port	Optional. Database port. By default, the MySQL or PostgreSQL port, depending on the database type.
database	Required. Database name.
user	Required. Database username.
password	Optional. Database password.
password_file	Optional. Database password file.
tls	Optional. Whether to use TLS.
cert	Optional. Path to TLS client certificate.
key	Optional. Path to TLS private key.
ca	Optional. Path to TLS CA certificate.
insecure	Optional. Whether not to verify the peer.
options	Optional. List of low-level database options that can be set to influence some Icinga Notifications internal default behaviours.

Database Options¶

Each of these configuration options are highly technical with thoroughly considered and tested default values that you should only change when you exactly know what you are doing. You can use these options to influence the Icinga Notifications default behaviour, how it interacts with databases, thus the defaults are usually sufficient for most users and do not need any manual adjustments.

Important

Do not change the defaults if you do not have to!

For YAML configuration, the options are part of the database.options dictionary. For environment variables, each option is prefixed with ICINGA_NOTIFICATIONS_DATABASE_OPTIONS_.

Option	Description
max_connections	Optional. Maximum number of database connections Icinga Notifications is allowed to open in parallel if necessary. Defaults to `16`.
max_connections_per_table	Optional. Maximum number of queries Icinga Notifications is allowed to execute on a single table concurrently. Defaults to `8`.
max_placeholders_per_statement	Optional. Maximum number of placeholders Icinga Notifications is allowed to use for a single SQL statement. Defaults to `8192`.
max_rows_per_transaction	Optional. Maximum number of rows Icinga Notifications is allowed to `SELECT`,`DELETE`,`UPDATE` or `INSERT` in a single transaction. Defaults to `8192`.
wsrep_sync_wait	Optional. Enforce Galera cluster nodes to perform strict cluster-wide causality checks. Defaults to `7`.

Logging Configuration¶

Configuration of the logging component used by Icinga Notifications.

For YAML configuration, the options are part of the logging dictionary. For environment variables, each option is prefixed with ICINGA_NOTIFICATIONS_LOGGING_.

Option	Description
level	Optional. Specifies the default logging level. Can be set to `fatal`, `error`, `warn`, `info` or `debug`. Defaults to `info`.
output	Optional. Configures the logging output. Can be set to `console` (stderr) or `systemd-journald`. Defaults to systemd-journald when running under systemd, otherwise to console. See notes below for systemd-journald.
interval	Optional. Interval for periodic logging defined as duration string. Defaults to `"20s"`.
options	Optional. Map of component name to logging level in order to set a different logging level for each component instead of the default one. See logging components for details.

Logging Components¶

The independent components of Icinga Notifications produce log entries. Each log entry is linked to its component and a log level.

By default, any log message will be displayed if its log level is at or above the level configured above. However, it is possible to override the log level for each component individually to show more or less information.

For YAML configuration, the options are part of the logging.options dictionary. For environment variables, ICINGA_NOTIFICATIONS_LOGGING_OPTIONS expects a single string of component:level pairs joined with ,.

The following example would log everything with at least info level, except database and listener entries, where the level is one time raised and one time lowered.

# YAML Configuration File
logging:
  level: info
  options:
    database: error
    listener: debug

# Environment Variables
ICINGA_NOTIFICATIONS_LOGGING_LEVEL=error
ICINGA_NOTIFICATIONS_LOGGING_OPTIONS=database:error,listener:debug

Component	Description
channel	Notification channels, their configuration and output.
database	Database connection status and queries.
incident	Incident management and changes.
listener	HTTP listener for event submission and debugging.
runtime-updates	Configuration changes through Icinga Notifications Web from the database.

Appendix¶

Duration String¶

A duration string is a sequence of decimal numbers and a unit suffix, such as "20s". Valid units are "ms", "s", "m" and "h".

Galera Cluster¶

Icinga Notifications expects a more consistent behaviour from its database than a Galera cluster provides by default. To accommodate this, Icinga Notifications sets the wsrep_sync_wait system variable for all its database connections. Consequently, strict cluster-wide causality checks are enforced before executing specific SQL queries, which are determined by the value set in the wsrep_sync_wait system variable. By default, Icinga Notifications sets this to 7, which includes READ, UPDATE, DELETE, INSERT, REPLACE query types and is usually sufficient. Unfortunately, this also has the downside that every single Icinga Notifications query will be blocked until the cluster nodes resynchronise their states after each executed query, and may result in degraded performance.

However, this does not necessarily have to be the case if, for instance, Icinga Notifications is only allowed to connect to a single cluster node at a time. This is the case when a load balancer does not randomly route connections to all the nodes evenly, but always to the same node until it fails, or if your database cluster nodes have a virtual IP address fail over assigned. In such situations, you can set the wsrep_sync_wait system variable to 0 in the /etc/icinga-notifications/config.yml file to disable it entirely, as Icinga Notifications doesn’t have to wait for cluster synchronisation then.

Systemd Journald Fields¶

When examining the journal with journalctl, fields containing additional information are hidden by default. Setting an appropriate --output option will include them, such as: --output verbose or --output json. For example:

journalctl --unit icinga-notifications.service --output verbose

All Icinga Notifications fields are prefixed with ICINGA_NOTIFICATIONS_, e.g., ICINGA_NOTIFICATIONS_ERROR for error messages.