Environment Variables

On top of the extensive customization options available through the Yarkon Admin Console, you can also control many aspects of the environment using environment variables. Some customizations are only available through environment variables. In case a feature is customizable using both the user interface and an environment variable, the user interface takes precedence.

Using Environment Variables

How you pass in environment variables to Yarkon depends on your specific deployment architecture. The following are common examples:

Standard Yarkon EC2

When you deploy Yarkon from the standard EC2 image in the AWS Marketplace, the instance is using pm2 as its process manager; environment variables are passed to the running server using the configuration file /var/app/current/yarkon-server.pm2.json. In the following example, you can see how to update the database type using this method.

{
    "apps": [{
        "name": "aphek",
        "script": "./aphek",
        "watch": false,
        "env": {
            "PORT": 80,
            "DATABASE_DIALECT": "mysql",
            "DATABASE_HOST": "url.to.database",
            "DATABASE_PORT": 3306,
            "DATABASE_DATABASE": "aphek",
            "DATABASE_USER": "aphek-user",
            "DATABASE_PASSWORD": "password"
        }
    }]
}

Standard Yarkon Docker

When you deploy Yarkon from the standard docker image in DockerHub, pass in the environment variables the same way you manage other variables. The following is a sample docker-compose that also shows how to pass in the basic env variables required by Yarkon:

version: "3.2"

    # We use "xyz" to denote the version number used. For instance, if you are using
    # yarkon version 4.5.1, "xyz" would be "451". You can use another naming convention
    # if you prefer. Explicitely definding the version number in the image tag and
    # volumes ensures that upgrades can be done sequentially and you can always restore
    # to a previous version.

services:
  server:
    image: "yarkon/server:x.y.z"  # Use the correct tag here
    ports:
      # Map the port of the host to the one used by Yarkon
      - "80:8000"
    environment:
      # When running in AWS, the preferred way to provide AWS API keys to the
      # container is through using an IAM machine role. If this cannot be done,
      # or when running it outside of AWS, you can pass credentials here:
      AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: "EXAMPLERFP4S3EXAMPLE"
      AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: "examplexcRA2gvPBPKAmt95yWIwz/vJIJexample"
      AWS_REGION: "us-east-1"

      # The provider name defaults to AWS, but you can change it to something
      # your users might find more recognizable. In the client, it is displayed
      # above the buckets and in the About form.
      PROVIDER_NAME: "My Company"

    volumes:
      - dbdata_xyz:/var/app/current/database
      - yarkon_xyz:/var/app/current/public/yarkon
      - license:/var/app/current/.lic
      - /var/log:/var/app/current/log # Map the /var/log folder on the host to the log folder
volumes:
  dbdata_xyz:
  yarkon_xyz:
  license:

Command line

When running Yarkon directly from the command line, environment variables are set just like you always do with a Unix server, depending on your shell. For instance, when using bash, make sure to export the values before starting Yarkon:

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=EXAMPLERFP4S3EXAMPLE

Available Variables

The following is an exhaustive list of all environment variables that are currently available with Yarkon, broken down by sections.

Credentials

Yarkon gets its credentials from the environment. The recommended way to facilitate that is to run Yarkon in an EC2 with a machine role. If however you prefer to pass credentials to the instance directly, you can do so using environment variables.

Logging

Yarkon provide extensive logging capabilities out of the box, which are useful for troubleshooting an monitoring. In case you need to debug a specific problem, and require additional logging information, you can add it using any of the following variables.

AWS

License

Yarkon requires a license key to operate. A key is preinstalled with each valid deployment oif Yarkon. In case you need to move the license key to a different location, you can do so.

Database

By default, Yarkon uses its on-board SQLite database to maintain its settings and other important run time information. You can change this configuration to better fit your use case, most notable for the High Availability scenario.

Connection

Audit Trail

Yarkon offers a powerful audit trail feature, allowing the admin to monitor user activity. BNy default, the audit trail would use the same credentials handed off to the server, but you can override it here to be able to send the audit trail to another account, or use a credential set with different permissions just for the audit trail CloudWatch access.

Compatible Providers

When using a third party compatible provider, environment variables must be used to specify the details of the provider.

Client User Interface

The user interface is customizable using themes. Some additional customizations are available through environment variables.