Configuration

In many cases, Girder will work with default configuration whether installed via pip or from a source checkout or tarball. That said, the Girder config file can be set at the following locations (ordered by precedent):

  1. The path specified by the environment variable GIRDER_CONFIG.
  2. ~/.girder/girder.cfg
  3. /etc/girder.cfg
  4. /path/to/girder/package/conf/girder.local.cfg
  5. /path/to/girder/package/conf/girder.dist.cfg

Logging

Much of Girder’s ouput is placed into the error or info log file. By default, these logs are stored in ~/.girder/logs. To set the Girder log root or error and info logs specifically, set the log_root, error_log_file, and/or info_log_file variables in the logging config group. If log_root is set error and info will be set to error.log and info.log within log_root respectively. The _log_file variables will override that setting and are absolute paths.

Plugin path

When checking out Girder from source (recommended), the plugin directory will be set to the plugins directory by default. If Girder is installed from PyPi (experimental), then the plugin directory can be set in the plugin_directory of the plugins section.

Server thread pool

Girder can handle mutiple requests at one time. The maximum number of simultaneous requests is set with the server.thread_pool value in the global config group. Once this many connections have been made to Girder, additional connections will block until existing connections finish.

Most operations on Girder are quick, and therefore do not use up a connection for a long duration. Some connections, notably calls to the notification/stream endpoint, can block for long periods. If you expect to have many clients, either increase the size of the thread pool or switch to using intermittent polling rather than long-duration connections.

Each available thread uses up some additional memory and requires internal socket or handle resources. The exact amount of memory and resources is dependent on the host operating system and the types of queries made to Girder. As one benchmark from an Ubuntu server, each additional available but unused connection requires roughly 25 kb of memory. If all connections are serving notification streams, each uses around 50 kb of memory.

Changing file limits

If all server threads are in use, additional attempts to connect will use a file handle while waiting to be processed. The number of open files is limited by the operating system, and may need to be increased. This limit affects actual connections, pending connections, and file use.

The method of changing file limits varies depending on your operating system. If your operating system is not listed here, try a web search for “Open Files Limit” along with your OS’s name.

Linux

You can query the current maximum number of files with the command:

ulimit -Sn

To increase this number for all users, as root or with sudo priveleges, edit /etc/security/limits.conf and append the following lines to the end of the file:

*    soft    nofile    32768
*    hard    nofile    32768

Save and close the file. The user running the Girder server will need to logout and log back in and restart the Girder server for the new limits to take effect.

This raises the limits for all users on the system. You can limit this change to just the user that runs the Girder server. See the documentation for /etc/security/limits.conf for details.