FLoM configuration

FLoM uses a cascading configuration principle: every parameter is inspected in 5 different locations and the last occurrence overloads the previous ones. Every time flom starts, it looks for parameters following this order:

1. hard wired values: they are inside source code and are ever available
2. system default config file: if you didn’t change it at configure time (command configure before command make), the standard location would be /usr/local/etc/flom.conf; if you changed installation paths, you should determine where flom.conf file must be put
3. user default config file: file .flom searched inside directory described by environment var $HOME or by /etc/passwd content if $HOME is not set
4. user custom config file: a custom file you specify using “-c” (“--config-file”) command line argument
5. specific command line arguments like “-r” (“--resource-name”)

System default file, user default config file, user custom config file must adhere to the same syntax; an example file is available at /usr/local/share/doc/flom/flom.conf.

Using configuration files is not mandatory, you can specify every parameter using command line arguments; many times it’s more convenient to store a set of parameters inside a configuration file and use command line arguments for the remaining parameters. The suggestion is to copy /usr/local/share/doc/flom/flom.conf to the desired destination (/usr/local/etc/flom.conf, $HOME/.flom, my_flom_conf_file) and customize it as necessary.