Mailing List Archive

Ingvar Hagelund <ingvar at linpro.no> writes:
> Steve Scally <steve at kcilink.com> writes:
> > Now my question, is there a more direct way to change the default_ttl
> > either through configuration files or .vcl file? If these are pretty
> > much the only three ways that is fine, I just wanted to make sure I
> > wasn't skipping over any options. Thank you in advance for your help.
> This mail has stayed unanswered on varnish-dist, but I think someone on
> varnish-misc may be able to answer.

The default TTL can be configured on the command line with -t ttl or
(as any other run-time parameter) with -p default_ttl=ttl. The
FreeBSD rc script does not currently have a variable for setting the
default TTL directly, nor a mechanism for setting run-time parameters
in general. I could either add code to the rc script to read in a
list of run-time parameters and pass them on the command line, or we
could add code to varnishd to read initial values from a file. I
prefer the former, but we need to add similar code to the Debian and
RedHat init scripts as well.

DES
--
Dag-Erling Sm?rgrav
Senior Software Developer
Linpro AS - www.linpro.no

* Steve Scally
>>> Now my question, is there a more direct way to change the default_ttl
>>> either through configuration files or .vcl file? If these are pretty
>>> much the only three ways that is fine, I just wanted to make sure I
>>> wasn't skipping over any options. Thank you in advance for your help.
>>>
* Dag-Erling Sm?rgrav
> The default TTL can be configured on the command line with -t ttl or
> (as any other run-time parameter) with -p default_ttl=ttl. The
> FreeBSD rc script does not currently have a variable for setting the
> default TTL directly, nor a mechanism for setting run-time parameters
> in general. I could either add code to the rc script to read in a
> list of run-time parameters and pass them on the command line, or we
> could add code to varnishd to read initial values from a file. I
> prefer the former, but we need to add similar code to the Debian and
> RedHat init scripts as well.
>
The RedHat and Debian init scripts reads default values from their
respective defaults file, that is, for RedHat, /etc/sysconfig/varnish,
and for Debian, /etc/defaults/varnish. In that file, you can add any
command line parameter to varnishd, not only those that are commented in
the file. Do we need any other mechanism for adding runtime parameters?
A full-fledged configuration file parser in varnishd?

Ingvar


redhat$ tail -4 /etc/sysconfig/varnish

## Alternative 4, Do It Yourself. See varnishd(1) for more information.
#
# DAEMON_OPTS=""

Ingvar Hagelund <ingvar.hagelund at linpro.no> writes:
> The RedHat and Debian init scripts reads default values from their
> respective defaults file, that is, for RedHat, /etc/sysconfig/varnish,
> and for Debian, /etc/defaults/varnish. In that file, you can add any
> command line parameter to varnishd, not only those that are commented in
> the file. Do we need any other mechanism for adding runtime parameters?
> A full-fledged configuration file parser in varnishd?
>
> Ingvar
>
>
> redhat$ tail -4 /etc/sysconfig/varnish
>
> ## Alternative 4, Do It Yourself. See varnishd(1) for more information.
> #
> # DAEMON_OPTS=""

The problem is that if you define DAEMON_OPTS, none of the other knobs
work, right? FreeBSD at least has that issue:

: ${varnishd_enable="NO"}
: ${varnishd_listen=":6081"}
: ${varnishd_config="%%PREFIX%%/etc/varnish/default.vcl"}
: ${varnishd_telnet="localhost:6082"}
: ${varnishd_storage="file,/tmp,50%"}
: ${varnishd_flags="-P ${pidfile} -a ${varnishd_listen} -f ${varnishd_config} -T ${varnishd_telnet} -s ${varnishd_storage}"}

if you define varnishd_flags, you have to specify everything manually,
since the other knobs only serve to populate the default value for
varnishd_flags.

Of course, we could introduce a varnishd_extra_flags knob that just
gets appended to varnishd_flags... not very elegant, though.

DES
--
Dag-Erling Sm?rgrav
Senior Software Developer
Linpro AS - www.linpro.no

I take this off varnish-misc as it is quite distro specific.

* Ingvar Hagelund
>> The RedHat and Debian init scripts reads default values from their
>> respective defaults file, that is, for RedHat, /etc/sysconfig/varnish,
>> and for Debian, /etc/defaults/varnish.

* Dag-Erling Sm?rgrav
> The problem is that if you define DAEMON_OPTS, none of the other knobs
> work, right? FreeBSD at least has that issue:
>
> if you define varnishd_flags, you have to specify everything manually,
> since the other knobs only serve to populate the default value for
> varnishd_flags.

At least for RedHat, there are no other knobs. All the startup
configuration is in the file. There are no hard coded values in the init
script. The init script won't start varnishd if DAEMON_OPTS is empty, or
the config file does not exist.

if [ "$DAEMON_OPTS" = "" ]; then
echo "\$DAEMON_OPTS empty."
echo -n "Please put configuration options in
/etc/sysconfig/varnish"
echo_failure

The configuration file is fairly documented with the most used options,
and points to the manpage for more advanced users.

I would not know if this is suitable for FreeBSD ports, but I think it's
quite a clean method to ensure that the user knows what she wants to
change before changing it. As for myself, I dislike magic "invisible"
default values.

Ingvar

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Buddha wears an iPod