Which Config File to Use

Butler SOS can use multiple config files. Here you learn to control which one is used.

A description of the config file format is available in the Configuration File Format reference.

Select Which Config File to Use

Butler SOS uses configuration files in YAML format.

Butler SOS comes with a default config file called production_template.yaml.
Make a copy of it, then rename the copy to butler-sos-config-prod.yaml, production.yaml, staging.yaml or something else suitable to your specific use case.

Update the config file as needed (see the config file reference page for details).

Important

Trying to run Butler SOS with the default config file (the one included in the files download from GitHub) will not work - you must adapt it to your server environment. For example, you need to enter the IP or host name of your Sense server(s), the IP or host name where Butler SOS is running, where the Sense certificates are stored, etc.

The name of the config file matters. Unless you specifically name which config to use when starting Butler SOS, it will look for an environment variable called NODE_ENV and then try to load a config file named with the value found in NODE_ENV.

Example 1:

• Environment variable NODE_ENV = production
• Butler SOS is started without specifying a config file: butler-sos.exe --loglevel info
• Butler SOS will look for a config file config/production.yaml

Example 2:

• Butler SOS is started with a command line option specifying a config file: butler-sos.exe --configfile d:\some\path\butler-sos-config-prod.yaml --loglevel info
• Butler SOS will not look at the NODE_ENV environment variable. Settings will be loaded from the butler-sos-config-prod.yaml instead.

Running Several Butler SOS Instances in Parallel

If you have several Sense clusters (for example DEV, TEST and PROD environments) you can either monitor them all from a single Butler SOS instance, or set up separate instances for each Sense cluster.

The second case is implemented by creating several config files: butler-sos-dev.yaml, butler-sos-test.yaml and butler-sos-prod.yaml.

In this scenario three instances of Butler SOS should be started, each given a different config file by setting the NODE_ENV variable as needed when starting Butler SOS.

Or (this option is usually much easier!) use the --configfile command line option when starting Butler SOS.

Note

If running several Butler SOS instances in parallel, you must also ensure that each one uses unique port numbers for their respective UDP servers, etc.

Setting Environment Variables

The method for setting environment variables varies between operating systems:

On Windows:

set NODE_ENV=production

On Mac OS or Linux:

export NODE_ENV=production

Using Docker:

If using Docker, the NODE_ENV environment variable is set in the docker-compose.yml file (as already done in the template docker-compose files).