ArangoDB Server Global Options

General help

—help

-h

Prints a list of the most common options available and then exits. In order tosee all options use —help-all.

To receive the startup options in JSON format, pass the —dump-options flag. This willprint out all options and exit.

Version

—version

-v

Prints the version of the server and exits.

Daemon

—daemon

Runs the server as a daemon (as a background process). This parameter can onlybe set if the pid (process id) file is specified. That is, unless a value to theparameter pid-file is given, then the server will report an error and exit.

Default Language

—default-language default-language

The default language ist used for sorting and comparing strings. The languagevalue is a two-letter language code (ISO-639) or it is composed by a two-letterlanguage code with and a two letter country code (ISO-3166). Valid languages are“de”, “en”, “en_US” or “en_UK”.

The default default-language is set to be the system locale on that platform.

Supervisor

—supervisor

Executes the server in supervisor mode. In the event that the serverunexpectedly terminates due to an internal error, the supervisor willautomatically restart the server. Setting this flag automatically implies thatthe server will run as a daemon. Note that, as with the daemon flag, this flagrequires that the pid-file parameter will set.

unix> ./arangod --supervisor --pid-file /var/run/arangodb.pid /tmp/vocbase/
2012-06-27T15:58:28Z [10133] INFO starting up in supervisor mode

As can be seen (e.g. by executing the ps command), this will start a supervisorprocess and the actual database process:

unix> ps fax | grep arangod
10137 ?        Ssl    0:00 ./arangod --supervisor --pid-file /var/run/arangodb.pid /tmp/vocbase/
10142 ?        Sl     0:00  \_ ./arangod --supervisor --pid-file /var/run/arangodb.pid /tmp/vocbase/

When the database process terminates unexpectedly, the supervisor process willstart up a new database process:

> kill -SIGSEGV 10142
> ps fax | grep arangod
10137 ?        Ssl    0:00 ./arangod --supervisor --pid-file /var/run/arangodb.pid /tmp/vocbase/
10168 ?        Sl     0:00  \_ ./arangod --supervisor --pid-file /var/run/arangodb.pid /tmp/vocbase/

User identity

—uid uid

The name (identity) of the user the server will run as. If this parameter is notspecified, the server will not attempt to change its UID, so that the UID usedby the server will be the same as the UID of the user who started the server. Ifthis parameter is specified, then the server will change its UID after openingports and reading configuration files, but before accepting connections oropening other files (such as recovery files). This is useful when the servermust be started with raised privileges (in certain environments) but securityconsiderations require that these privileges be dropped once the server hasstarted work.

Observe that this parameter cannot be used to bypass operating systemsecurity. In general, this parameter (and its corresponding relative gid) canlower privileges but not raise them.

Group identity

—gid gid

The name (identity) of the group the server will run as. If this parameter isnot specified, then the server will not attempt to change its GID, so that theGID the server runs as will be the primary group of the user who started theserver. If this parameter is specified, then the server will change its GIDafter opening ports and reading configuration files, but before acceptingconnections or opening other files (such as recovery files).

This parameter is related to the parameter uid.

Process identity

—pid-file filename

The name of the process ID file to use when running the server as adaemon. This parameter must be specified if either the flag daemon orsupervisor is set.

Console

—console

Runs the server in an exclusive emergency console mode. Whenstarting the server with this option, the server is started withan interactive JavaScript emergency console, with all networkingand HTTP interfaces of the server disabled.

No requests can be made to the server in this mode, and the onlyway to work with the server in this mode is by using the emergencyconsole.Note that the server cannot be started in this mode if it isalready running in this or another mode.