File format

Yaml File Format

ejabberd loads its configuration file during startup. This configuration file is written in YAML format, and its file name MUST have “.yml” or “.yaml” extension. This helps ejabberd to differentiate between this new format and the legacy configuration file format.

Please, consult ejabberd.log for configuration errors. ejabberd will report syntax related errors, as well as complains about unknown options and invalid values. Make sure you respect indentation (YAML is sensitive to this) or you will get pretty cryptic errors.

Note that ejabberd never edits the configuration file. If you are changing parameters at runtime from web admin interface, you will need to apply them to configuration file manually. This is to prevent messing up with your config file comments, syntax, etc.

Reload at Runtime

You can modify the ejabberd configuration file and reload it at runtime: the changes you made are applied immediately, no need to restart ejabberd. This applies to adding, changing or removing vhosts, listened ports, modules, ACLs or any other options.

How to do this?

1. Let's assume your ejabberd server is already running
2. Modify the configuration file
3. Run the reload_config command
4. ejabberd will read that file, check its YAML syntax is valid, check the options are valid and known...
5. If there's any problem in the configuration file, the reload is aborted and an error message is logged with details, so you can fix the problem.
6. If the file is right, it detects the changed options, and applies them immediately (add/remove hosts, add/remove modules, ...)

Legacy Configuration File

In previous ejabberd version the configuration file should be written in Erlang terms. The format is still supported, but it is highly recommended to convert it to the new YAML format with the convert_to_yaml API command using ejabberdctl.

If you want to specify some options using the old Erlang format, you can set them in an additional cfg file, and include it using the include_config_file option, see Include Additional Files.

Include Additional Files

The option include_config_file in a configuration file instructs ejabberd to include other configuration files immediately.

This is a basic example:

include_config_file: /etc/ejabberd/additional.yml

In this example, the included file is not allowed to contain a listen option. If such an option is present, the option will not be accepted. The file is in a subdirectory from where the main configuration file is.

include_config_file:
  ./example.org/additional_not_listen.yml:
    disallow: [listen]

Please notice that options already defined in the main configuration file cannot be redefined in the included configuration files. But you can use host_config and append_host_config as usual (see Virtual Hosting).

In this example, ejabberd.yml defines some ACL for the whole ejabberd server, and later includes another file:

acl:
  admin:
    user:
      - admin@localhost
include_config_file:
  /etc/ejabberd/acl.yml

The file acl.yml can add additional administrators to one of the virtual hosts:

append_host_config:
  localhost:
    acl:
      admin:
        user:
          - bob@localhost
          - jan@localhost

Macros in Configuration File

In the ejabberd configuration file, it is possible to define a macro for a value and later use this macro when defining an option.

A macro is defined using the define_macro option.

This example shows the basic usage of a macro:

define_macro:
  LOG_LEVEL_NUMBER: 5
loglevel: LOG_LEVEL_NUMBER

The resulting option interpreted by ejabberd is: loglevel: 5.

This example shows that values can be any arbitrary YAML value:

define_macro:
  USERBOB:
    user:
      - bob@localhost
acl:
  admin: USERBOB

The resulting option interpreted by ejabberd is:

acl:
  admin:
    user:
      - bob@localhost

This complex example:

define_macro:
  NUMBER_PORT_C2S: 5222
  NUMBER_PORT_HTTP: 5280
listen:
  -
    port: NUMBER_PORT_C2S
    module: ejabberd_c2s
  -
    port: NUMBER_PORT_HTTP
    module: ejabberd_http

produces this result after being interpreted:

listen:
  -
    port: 5222
    module: ejabberd_c2s
  -
    port: 5280
    module: ejabberd_http