Configuration Overview¶

• Table of contents
• Configuration Overview
  • General Syntax Information and Conventions
  • Tags
    • Tag Types
  • Directives
    • Directive Types
  • Modular Configuration File Structure
  • Additional Information

This page contains general information about the SysScope configuration file and outlines its elements and structure.

General Syntax Information and Conventions¶

The SysScope configuration file contains statements arranged in a way that resembles Apache configuration style. By convention, the statements are separated into tags and directives.

Tags¶

Tags are enclosed in < and > characters. Whenever the tag name begins with a slash (/), the tag is called a closing tag, otherwise it is an opening tag. An opening tag and a closing tag define a configuration block. For instance, the following statements define the Graph configuration block:

<Graph Memory Usage>
...
</Graph>

Note that an opening tag, depending on its type, may contain any amount of information after its name, Memory Usage in the example above.

Configuration blocks may be nested. In other words, a block may contain other blocks. For instance:

<Section Memory>
  <Graph Used Memory>
  ...
  </Graph>
  <Graph Free Memory>
  ...
  </Graph>
</Section>

Note that all configuration blocks and directives are contained in the master block, called GLOBAL.

Tag Types¶

Thre are two types of tags:

• Simple tags:
  

   <Tag>...</Tag>
   

• Special tags:
  

   <Tag blah blah>...</Tag>
   

As it is obvious, special opening tags may contain any amount of information after their name.

Directives¶

Directives are statements that are followed by a value.

Directive value

The placement of the various directives in the configuration file is governed by some syntax rules, which limit the usage of each directive to certain configuration blocks. For example, the directive Legend is only allowed in a Graph configuration block:

<Graph ...>
  Legend ...
</Graph>

Directive Types¶

There two types of directives:

• Simple directives: consist of two parts:
1. the directive name
2. the data:

   Example:

    Directive data
    

• Special directives: consist of three parts:
1. the directive name
2. a variable name, to which the data is assigned. The variable can then be used by subsequent directives.
3. the data

   Example:

    Directive variable_name data
    

Modular Configuration File Structure¶

The configuration file may contain the directive Include. The syntax of this directive is:

Include /path/to/file.conf

Whenever the Include directive is met, it instructs the configuration file parser to import additional configuration statements from the specified file (/path/to/file.conf).

It may be placed anywhere within the configuration file.

Moreover, wildcards may be used in order to include several configuration file with a single Include directive.

Include /etc/sysscope.d/*.conf

Additional Information¶

Lines beginning with the '#' character (without quotes) are considered as comments. For instance:

# This is a comment

Empty lines mean nothing.

Leading spaces mean nothing.