corda/docs/source/corda-configuration-file.rst

Node configuration

Configuration file location

When starting a node, the corda.jar file defaults to reading the node's configuration from a node.conf file in the directory from which the command to launch Corda is executed. There are two command-line options to override this behaviour:

• The --config-file command line option allows you to specify a configuration file with a different name, or in a different file location. Paths are relative to the current working directory
• The --base-directory command line option allows you to specify the node's workspace location. A node.conf configuration file is then expected in the root of this workspace.

If you specify both command line arguments at the same time, the node will fail to start.

Configuration file format

The Corda configuration file uses the HOCON format which is a superset of JSON. Please visit https://github.com/typesafehub/config/blob/master/HOCON.md for further details.

Please do NOT use double quotes (") in configuration keys.

Node setup will log Config files should not contain " in property names. Please fix: [key] as an error when it finds double quotes around keys. This prevents configuration errors when mixing keys containing . wrapped with double quotes and without them e.g.: The property "dataSourceProperties.dataSourceClassName" = "val" in Reference.conf would be not overwritten by the property dataSourceProperties.dataSourceClassName = "val2" in node.conf.

Warning

If a property is defined twice the last one will take precedence. The library currently used for parsing HOCON currently does not provide a way to catch duplicates when parsing files and will silently override values for the same key. For example having key=initialValue defined first in node.conf and later on down the lines key=overridingValue will result into the value being overridingValue.

By default the node will fail to start in presence of unknown property keys. To alter this behaviour, the on-unknown-config-keys command-line argument can be set to IGNORE (default is FAIL).

Note

As noted in the HOCON documentation, the default behaviour for resources referenced within a config file is to silently ignore them if missing. Therefore it is strongly recommended to utilise the required syntax for includes. See HOCON documentation for more information.

Overriding configuration values

Placeholder Overrides

It is possible to add placeholders to the node.conf file to override particular settings via environment variables. In this case the rpcSettings.address property will be overridden by the RPC_ADDRESS environment variable, and the node will fail to load if this environment variable isn't present (see: hiding-sensitive-data for more information).

rpcSettings {
  address=${RPC_ADDRESS}
  adminAddress="localhost:10015"
}

Direct Overrides

It is also possible to directly override Corda configuration (regardless of whether the setting is already in the node.conf), by using environment variables or JVM options. Simply prefix the field with corda. or corda_, using periods (.) or underscores (_) to signify nested options. For example, to override the rpcSettings.address setting, you can override it via environment variables:

# For *nix systems:
export corda_rpcSettings_address=localhost:10015

# On Windows systems:
SET corda_rpcSettings_address=localhost:10015
SET corda.rpcSettings.address=localhost:10015

Or via JVM arguments:

java -Dcorda_rpcSettings_address=localhost:10015 -jar corda.jar
java -Dcorda.rpcSettings.address=localhost:10015 -jar corda.jar

Items in lists can be overridden by appending the list index to the configuration key. For example, the jarDirs setting can be overridden via:

# via JVM arguments:
java -Dcorda.jarDirs.0=./libs -Dcorda.jarDirs.1=./morelibs -jar corda.jar
java -Dcorda_jarDirs_0=./libs -Dcorda_jarDirs_1=./morelibs -jar corda.jar

# or via environment variables

# for *nix systems:
export corda_jarDirs_0=./libs
export corda_jarDirs_1=./morelibs

# for Windows systems:
SET corda.jarDirs.0=./libs
SET corda.jarDirs.1=./morelibs
# or
SET corda_jarDirs_0=./libs
SET corda_jarDirs_1=./morelibs

Limitations

• If the same key is overridden by both an environment variable and system property, the system property takes precedence.

• Variables and properties are case sensitive. Corda will warn you if a variable prefixed with CORDA cannot be mapped to a valid property. Shadowing occurs when two properties of the same type with the same key are defined. For example having corda.p2Aaddress=host:port and corda_p2Aaddress=host1:port1 will raise an exception on startup. This is to prevent hard to spot mistakes.

• If an item in a list is overridden via an environment variable/system property, the whole list will be overridden. E.g., with a node.conf containing:

  jarDirs=["./dir1", "./dir2", "./dir3"]

  When Corda is started via:

  java -Dcorda.jarDirs_0=./newdir1

  The resulting value of jarDirs will be ["./newdir1"].

• You can't override a populated list with an empty list. For example, when devMode=false, cordappSignerKeyFingerprintBlacklist is pre-populated with Corda development keys. It isn't possible to set this to an empty list via the commandline. You can however override the list with an all zero hash which will remove the keys:

  java -Dcorda.cordappSignerKeyFingerprintBlacklist.0="0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000"

• Objects in lists cannot currently be overridden. For example the rpcUsers configuration key is a list of user objects, overriding these via environment variables or system properties will not work.

Configuration file fields

additionalP2PAddresses

An array of additional host:port values, which will be included in the advertised NodeInfo in the network map in addition to the p2pAddress <corda_configuration_file_p2pAddress>. Nodes can use this configuration option to advertise HA endpoints and aliases to external parties.

Default: empty list

attachmentContentCacheSizeMegaBytes

Optionally specify how much memory should be used to cache attachment contents in memory.

Default: 10MB

attachmentCacheBound

Optionally specify how many attachments should be cached locally. Note that this includes only the key and metadata, the content is cached separately and can be loaded lazily.

Default: 1024

blacklistedAttachmentSigningKeys

List of SHA-256 hashes of public keys. Attachments signed by any of these public keys will not be considered as trust roots for any attachments received over the network. This property is similar to cordappSignerKeyFingerprintBlacklist <corda_configuration_file_signer_blacklist> but only restricts CorDapps that were included as attachments in a transaction and received over the network from a peer.

See Signing CorDapps for use with Signature Constraints <signing_cordapps_for_use_with_signature_constraints> for more information about signing CorDapps and what makes an attachment trusted (a trust root).

This property requires retrieving the hashes of public keys that need to be blacklisted. More information on this process can be found in Generating a public key hash <generating_a_public_key_hash>.

Default: not defined

compatibilityZoneURL (deprecated)

The root address of the Corda compatibility zone network management services, it is used by the Corda node to register with the network and obtain a Corda node certificate, (See permissioning for more information.) and also is used by the node to obtain network map information. Cannot be set at the same time as the networkServices <corda_configuration_file_networkServices> option.

Important: old configuration value, please use networkServices

Default: not defined

cordappSignerKeyFingerprintBlacklist

List of the public keys fingerprints (SHA-256 of public key hash) not allowed as Cordapp JARs signers. The node will not load Cordapps signed by those keys. The option takes effect only in production mode and defaults to Corda development keys (["56CA54E803CB87C8472EBD3FBC6A2F1876E814CEEBF74860BD46997F40729367", "83088052AF16700457AE2C978A7D8AC38DD6A7C713539D00B897CD03A5E5D31D"]), in development mode any key is allowed to sign Cordpapp JARs.

This property requires retrieving the hashes of public keys that need to be blacklisted. More information on this process can be found in Generating a public key hash <generating_a_public_key_hash>.

Default: not defined

crlCheckSoftFail

This is a boolean flag that when enabled (i.e. true value is set) causes certificate revocation list (CRL) checking to use soft fail mode. Soft fail mode allows the revocation check to succeed if the revocation status cannot be determined because of a network error. If this parameter is set to false rigorous CRL checking takes place. This involves each certificate in the certificate path being checked for a CRL distribution point extension, and that this extension points to a URL serving a valid CRL. This means that if any CRL URL in the certificate path is inaccessible, the connection with the other party will fail and be marked as bad. Additionally, if any certificate in the hierarchy, including the self-generated node SSL certificate, is missing a valid CRL URL, then the certificate path will be marked as invalid.

Default: true

custom

Set custom command line attributes (e.g. Java system properties) on the node process via the capsule launcher

jvmArgs:

A list of JVM arguments to apply to the node process. This removes any defaults specified from corda.jar, but can be overridden from the command line. See setting_jvm_args for examples and details on the precedence of the different approaches to settings arguments.

Default: not defined

database

Database configuration

transactionIsolationLevel:

Transaction isolation level as defined by the TRANSACTION_ constants in java.sql.Connection, but without the TRANSACTION_ prefix.

Default: REPEATABLE_READ

exportHibernateJMXStatistics:

Whether to export Hibernate JMX statistics.

Caution: enabling this option causes expensive run-time overhead

Default: false

initialiseSchema

Boolean which indicates whether to update the database schema at startup (or create the schema when node starts for the first time). If set to false on startup, the node will validate if it's running against a compatible database schema.

Default: true

initialiseAppSchema

The property allows to override database.initialiseSchema for the Hibernate DDL generation for CorDapp schemas. UPDATE performs an update of CorDapp schemas, while VALID only verifies their integrity and NONE performs no check. When initialiseSchema is set to false, then initialiseAppSchema may be set as VALID or NONE only.

Default: CorDapp schema creation is controlled with initialiseSchema.

dataSourceProperties

This section is used to configure the JDBC connection and database driver used for the node's persistence. Node database <standalone_database_config_examples_ref> contains example configurations for other database providers. To add additional data source properties (for a specific JDBC driver) use the dataSource. prefix with the property name (e.g. dataSource.customProperty = value).

dataSourceClassName

JDBC Data Source class name.

dataSource.url

JDBC database URL.

dataSource.user

Database user.

dataSource.password

Database password.

Default:

dataSourceClassName = org.h2.jdbcx.JdbcDataSource
dataSource.url = "jdbc:h2:file:"${baseDirectory}"/persistence;DB_CLOSE_ON_EXIT=FALSE;WRITE_DELAY=0;LOCK_TIMEOUT=10000"
dataSource.user = sa
dataSource.password = ""

detectPublicIp

This flag toggles the auto IP detection behaviour. If enabled, on startup the node will attempt to discover its externally visible IP address first by looking for any public addresses on its network interfaces, and then by sending an IP discovery request to the network map service. Set to true to enable.

Default: false

devMode

This flag sets the node to run in development mode. On startup, if the keystore <workspace>/certificates/sslkeystore.jks does not exist, a developer keystore will be used if devMode is true. The node will exit if devMode is false and the keystore does not exist. devMode also turns on background checking of flow checkpoints to shake out any bugs in the checkpointing process. Also, if devMode is true, Hibernate will try to automatically create the schema required by Corda or update an existing schema in the SQL database; if devMode is false, Hibernate will simply validate the existing schema, failing on node start if the schema is either not present or not compatible. If no value is specified in the node configuration file, the node will attempt to detect if it's running on a developer machine and set devMode=true in that case. This value can be overridden from the command line using the --dev-mode option.

Default: Corda will try to establish based on OS environment

devModeOptions

Allows modification of certain devMode features

Important: This is an unsupported configuration.

allowCompatibilityZone

Allows a node configured to operate in development mode to connect to a compatibility zone.

Default: not defined

emailAddress

The email address responsible for node administration, used by the Compatibility Zone administrator.

Default: company@example.com

extraNetworkMapKeys

An optional list of private network map UUIDs. Your node will fetch the public network and private network maps based on these keys. Private network UUID should be provided by network operator and lets you see nodes not visible on public network.

Important: This is a temporary feature for onboarding network participants that limits their visibility for privacy reasons.

Default: not defined

flowExternalOperationThreadPoolSize

The number of threads available to execute external operations that have been called from flows. See the documentation on calling external systems inside flows <api_flows_external_operations> for more information.

Default: Set to the lesser of either the maximum number of cores allocated to the node, or 10.

flowMonitorPeriodMillis

Duration of the period suspended flows waiting for IO are logged.

Default: 60 seconds

flowMonitorSuspensionLoggingThresholdMillis

Threshold duration suspended flows waiting for IO need to exceed before they are logged.

Default: 60 seconds

flowTimeout

When a flow implementing the TimedFlow interface and setting the isTimeoutEnabled flag does not complete within a defined elapsed time, it is restarted from the initial checkpoint. Currently only used for notarisation requests with clustered notaries: if a notary cluster member dies while processing a notarisation request, the client flow eventually times out and gets restarted. On restart the request is resent to a different notary cluster member in a round-robin fashion. Note that the flow will keep retrying forever.

timeout

The initial flow timeout period.

Default: 30 seconds

maxRestartCount

The number of retries the back-off time keeps growing for. For subsequent retries, the timeout value will remain constant.

Default: 6

backoffBase

The base of the exponential backoff, t_{wait} = timeout * backoffBase^{retryCount}

Default: 1.8

h2Port (deprecated)

Defines port for h2 DB.

Important: Deprecated please use h2Setting instead

h2Settings

Sets the H2 JDBC server host and port. See node-database-access-h2. For non-localhost address the database password needs to be set in dataSourceProperties.

Default: NULL

jarDirs

An optional list of file system directories containing JARs to include in the classpath when launching via corda.jar only. Each should be a string. Only the JARs in the directories are added, not the directories themselves. This is useful for including JDBC drivers and the like. e.g. jarDirs = [ ${baseDirectory}"/libs" ]. (Note that you have to use the baseDirectory substitution value when pointing to a relative path).

Default: not defined

jmxMonitoringHttpPort

If set, will enable JMX metrics reporting via the Jolokia HTTP/JSON agent on the corresponding port. Default Jolokia access url is http://127.0.0.1:port/jolokia/

Default: not defined

jmxReporterType

Provides an option for registering an alternative JMX reporter. Available options are JOLOKIA and NEW_RELIC.

The Jolokia configuration is provided by default. The New Relic configuration leverages the Dropwizard NewRelicReporter solution. See Introduction to New Relic for Java for details on how to get started and how to install the New Relic Java agent.

Default: JOLOKIA

keyStorePassword

The password to unlock the KeyStore file (<workspace>/certificates/sslkeystore.jks) containing the node certificate and private key.

Important: This is the non-secret value for the development certificates automatically generated during the first node run. Longer term these keys will be managed in secure hardware devices.

Default: cordacadevpass

lazyBridgeStart

Internal option.

Important: Please do not change.

Default: true

messagingServerAddress

The address of the ArtemisMQ broker instance. If not provided the node will run one locally.

Default: not defined

messagingServerExternal

If messagingServerAddress is specified the default assumption is that the artemis broker is running externally. Setting this to false overrides this behaviour and runs the artemis internally to the node, but bound to the address specified in messagingServerAddress. This allows the address and port advertised in p2pAddress to differ from the local binding, especially if there is external remapping by firewalls, load balancers , or routing rules. Note that detectPublicIp should be set to false to ensure that no translation of the p2pAddress occurs before it is sent to the network map.

Default: not defined

myLegalName

The legal identity of the node. This acts as a human-readable alias to the node's public key and can be used with the network map to look up the node's info. This is the name that is used in the node's certificates (either when requesting them from the doorman, or when auto-generating them in dev mode). At runtime, Corda checks whether this name matches the name in the node's certificates. For more details please read node-naming chapter.

Default: not defined

notary

Optional configuration object which if present configures the node to run as a notary. If part of a Raft or BFT-SMaRt cluster then specify raft or bftSMaRt respectively as described below. If a single node notary then omit both.

validating

Boolean to determine whether the notary is a validating or non-validating one.

Default: false

serviceLegalName

If the node is part of a distributed cluster, specify the legal name of the cluster. At runtime, Corda checks whether this name matches the name of the certificate of the notary cluster.

Default: not defined

raft

(Experimental) If part of a distributed Raft cluster, specify this configuration object with the following settings:

nodeAddress

The host and port to which to bind the embedded Raft server. Note that the Raft cluster uses a separate transport layer for communication that does not integrate with ArtemisMQ messaging services.

Default: not defined

clusterAddresses

Must list the addresses of all the members in the cluster. At least one of the members must be active and be able to communicate with the cluster leader for the node to join the cluster. If empty, a new cluster will be bootstrapped.

Default: not defined

bftSMaRt

(Experimental) If part of a distributed BFT-SMaRt cluster, specify this configuration object with the following settings:

replicaId

The zero-based index of the current replica. All replicas must specify a unique replica id.

Default: not defined

clusterAddresses

Must list the addresses of all the members in the cluster. At least one of the members must be active and be able to communicate with the cluster leader for the node to join the cluster. If empty, a new cluster will be bootstrapped.

Default: not defined

networkParameterAcceptanceSettings

Optional settings for managing the network parameter auto-acceptance behaviour. If not provided then the defined defaults below are used.

autoAcceptEnabled

This flag toggles auto accepting of network parameter changes. If a network operator issues a network parameter change which modifies only auto-acceptable options and this behaviour is enabled then the changes will be accepted without any manual intervention from the node operator. See network-map for more information on the update process and current auto-acceptable parameters. Set to false to disable.

Default: true

excludedAutoAcceptableParameters

List of auto-acceptable parameter names to explicitly exclude from auto-accepting. Allows a node operator to control the behaviour at a more granular level.

Default: empty list

networkServices

If the Corda compatibility zone services, both network map and registration (doorman), are not running on the same endpoint and thus have different URLs then this option should be used in place of the compatibilityZoneURL setting.

Important: Only one of ``compatibilityZoneURL`` or ``networkServices`` should be used.

doormanURL

Root address of the network registration service.

Default: not defined

networkMapURL

Root address of the network map service.

Default: not defined

pnm

Optional UUID of the private network operating within the compatibility zone this node should be joining.

Default: not defined

csrToken

Optional token to provide alongside the certificate signing request (CSR) as part of the HTTP header during node registration. The token can be used by certificate signing authority (or Identity Manager Service) to verify additional identity requirements. The maximum token length is limited by the maximum HTTP header size, which is normally 8KB, assuming that a few other internal attributes are also present in the header. Also, the token length itself may never exceed 8192, limited by the database structure. Only US-ASCII characters are allowed.

Default: not defined

p2pAddress

The host and port on which the node is available for protocol operations over ArtemisMQ.

In practice the ArtemisMQ messaging services bind to all local addresses on the specified port. However, note that the host is the included as the advertised entry in the network map. As a result the value listed here must be externally accessible when running nodes across a cluster of machines. If the provided host is unreachable, the node will try to auto-discover its public one.

Default: not defined

rpcAddress (deprecated)

The address of the RPC system on which RPC requests can be made to the node. If not provided then the node will run without RPC.

Important: Deprecated. Use rpcSettings instead.

Default: not defined

rpcSettings

Options for the RPC server exposed by the Node.

Important: The RPC SSL certificate is used by RPC clients to authenticate the connection. The Node operator must provide RPC clients with a truststore containing the certificate they can trust. We advise Node operators to not use the P2P keystore for RPC. The node can be run with the "generate-rpc-ssl-settings" command, which generates a secure keystore and truststore that can be used to secure the RPC connection. You can use this if you have no special requirements.

address

host and port for the RPC server binding.

Default: not defined

adminAddress

host and port for the RPC admin binding (this is the endpoint that the node process will connect to).

Default: not defined

standAloneBroker

boolean, indicates whether the node will connect to a standalone broker for RPC.

Default: false

useSsl

boolean, indicates whether or not the node should require clients to use SSL for RPC connections.

Default: false

ssl

(mandatory if useSsl=true) SSL settings for the RPC server.

keyStorePath

Absolute path to the key store containing the RPC SSL certificate.

Default: not defined

keyStorePassword

Password for the key store.

Default: not defined

rpcUsers

A list of users who are authorised to access the RPC system. Each user in the list is a configuration object with the following fields:

username

Username consisting only of word characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9 and _)

Default: not defined

password

The password

Default: not defined

permissions

A list of permissions for starting flows via RPC. To give the user the permission to start the flow foo.bar.FlowClass, add the string StartFlow.foo.bar.FlowClass to the list. If the list contains the string ALL, the user can start any flow via RPC. Wildcards are also allowed, for example StartFlow.foo.bar.* will allow the user to start any flow within the foo.bar package. This value is intended for administrator users and for development.

Default: not defined

security

Contains various nested fields controlling user authentication/authorization, in particular for RPC accesses. See clientrpc for details.

sshd

If provided, node will start internal SSH server which will provide a management shell. It uses the same credentials and permissions as RPC subsystem. It has one required parameter.

port

The port to start SSH server on e.g. sshd { port = 2222 }.

Default: not defined

systemProperties

An optional map of additional system properties to be set when launching via corda.jar only. Keys and values of the map should be strings. e.g. systemProperties = { visualvm.display.name = FooBar }

Default: not defined

transactionCacheSizeMegaBytes

Optionally specify how much memory should be used for caching of ledger transactions in memory.

Default: 8 MB plus 5% of all heap memory above 300MB.

tlsCertCrlDistPoint

CRL distribution point (i.e. URL) for the TLS certificate. Default value is NULL, which indicates no CRL availability for the TLS certificate.

Important: This needs to be set if crlCheckSoftFail is false (i.e. strict CRL checking is on).

Default: NULL

tlsCertCrlIssuer

CRL issuer (given in the X500 name format) for the TLS certificate. Default value is NULL, which indicates that the issuer of the TLS certificate is also the issuer of the CRL.

Important: If this parameter is set then `tlsCertCrlDistPoint` needs to be set as well.

Default: NULL

trustStorePassword

The password to unlock the Trust store file (<workspace>/certificates/truststore.jks) containing the Corda network root certificate. This is the non-secret value for the development certificates automatically generated during the first node run.

Default: trustpass

useTestClock

Internal option.

Important: Please do not change.

Default: false

verfierType

Internal option.

Important: Please do not change.

Default: InMemory

Reference.conf

A set of default configuration options are loaded from the built-in resource file /node/src/main/resources/reference.conf. This file can be found in the :node gradle module of the Corda repository. Any options you do not specify in your own node.conf file will use these defaults.

Here are the contents of the reference.conf file:

../../node/src/main/resources/reference.conf

Configuration examples

Node configuration hosting the IRSDemo services

General node configuration file for hosting the IRSDemo services

example-code/src/main/resources/example-node.conf

Simple notary configuration file

myLegalName = "O=Notary Service,OU=corda,L=London,C=GB"
keyStorePassword = "cordacadevpass"
trustStorePassword = "trustpass"
p2pAddress = "localhost:12345"
rpcSettings {
    useSsl = false
    standAloneBroker = false
    address = "my-corda-node:10003"
    adminAddress = "my-corda-node:10004"
}
notary {
    validating = false
}
devMode = false
networkServices {
    doormanURL = "https://cz.example.com"
    networkMapURL = "https://cz.example.com"
}

Node configuration with diffrent URL for NetworkMap and Doorman

Configuring a node where the Corda Compatibility Zone's registration and Network Map services exist on different URLs

example-code/src/main/resources/example-node-with-networkservices.conf

Generating a public key hash ----------------------

This section details how a public key hash can be extracted and generated from a signed CorDapp. This is required for a select number of configuration properties.

Below are the steps to generate a hash for a CorDapp signed with a RSA certificate. A similar process should work for other certificate types.

• Extract the contents of the signed CorDapp jar.

• Run the following command (replacing the < > variables):

  openssl pkcs7 -in <extract_signed_jar_directory>/META-INF/<signature_to_hash>.RSA -print_certs -inform DER -outform DER \
  | openssl x509 -pubkey -noout \
  | openssl rsa -pubin -outform der | openssl dgst -sha256

• Copy the public key hash that is generated and place it into the required location (e.g. in node.conf).