Global configuration

This section describes the location and contents of Zotonic’s global configuration files.

Config file locations

Zotonic depends on two global config files, called zotonic.config and erlang.config. On startup, Zotonic looks in the following places for these files:

  • $HOME/.zotonic/(nodename)/
  • $HOME/.zotonic/(version)/
  • $HOME/.zotonic/
  • /etc/zotonic/(nodename)/
  • /etc/zotonic/(version)/
  • /etc/zotonic/

Where (nodename) is the name of the Zotonic Erlang node, which defaults to zotonic001 (and can be set with $NODENAME environment variable). Using the node name in the configuration path comes in handy when you want to run multiple Zotonic instances simultaneously.

(version) is the minor version number of Zotonic, e.g. 0.11 for all Zotonic 0.11.x variants. This way, you can have separate configuration files for different versions of Zotonic which are running simultaneously.

When the Zotonic startup script finds a config file in one of the directories, it stops looking, so files in the other directories are ignored.

In the course of Zotonic starting up, it will print the locations of the global config files that it is using:

17:03:54.766 [info] Zotonic started
17:03:54.766 [info] ===============
17:03:54.766 [info] Config files used:
17:03:54.768 [info] - /home/user/.zotonic/0.11/erlang.config
17:03:54.768 [info] - /home/user/.zotonic/zotonic001/zotonic.config

The zotonic.config file

When installed for the first time, the zotonic.config file is well annoted with comments about what each setting does. When in doubt, consult the stock zotonic.config file for explanation about all config settings.

In the zotonic.config file you will find the password for the zotonic_status site where you can manage the server.

Zotonic configurations can also be fetched in the Erlang shell. For example, view the zotonic_status password:

z_config:get(password).

user_sites_dir, user_modules_dir and user_ebin_dir

Since version 0.11, Zotonic keeps sites and modules that are external to Zotonic, e.g. installed by website developers, outside the Zotonic source tree.

The directory under which Zotonic expects to find all sites is called the User sites directory. This is configured with the config parameter user_sites_dir. This directory defaults to user/sites, relative to Zotonic’s installation directory.

The directory under which Zotonic expects to find all external modules, e.g. those installed with zotonic modules install mod_...., is called the User modules directory. This is configured with the config parameter user_modules_dir. This directory defaults to user/modules, relative to Zotonic’s installation directory.

Optionally it is possible to change the location of the compiled erlang code in the user sites and module directories. The default location for these files is ebin in Zotonic’s installation directory. This is configured with the user_ebin_dir config parameter. This makes it possible to separate the beam files of user defined code from Zotonic’s beam files.

deps

The zotonic.config file can hold extra dependencies which are to be installed as part of a user’s installation. These deps are formatted similar to how they would be listed in a rebar.config file:

{deps,
 [
  {jsx, "1.4", {git, "git://github.com/talentdeficit/jsx", {tag, "v1.4"}}}
 ]},

On compile time, these deps are added to the list of the standard deps from Zotonic’s rebar.config file, and cloned and compiled in the same way.

The erlang.config file

The erlang.config file contains application environment variables for the Erlang applications that Zotonic depends on. Here you can configure for instance the paths for the log files (in the lager section), emqtt ports, et cetera.