Service settings

The services your site runs beside it — the database, the cache, Nginx, PHP itself — each take a handful of settings: how much memory the database keeps for its cache, the largest upload Nginx lets through, how long a PHP request may run. You set them in vallic.yaml, under the service they belong to.

runtime:
  php: '8.4'

services:
  - mariadb:
      version: '11.8'
      environment:
        MYSQL_MAX_ALLOWED_PACKET: 256M
        MYSQL_SLOW_QUERY_LOG: '1'
  - nginx:
      version: '1.31'
      environment:
        NGINX_CLIENT_MAX_BODY_SIZE: 64m
  - php:
      version: '8.4'
      environment:
        PHP_MAX_EXECUTION_TIME: '120'
        PHP_UPLOAD_MAX_FILESIZE: 64M
        PHP_POST_MAX_SIZE: 64M

Every entry under services needs a version, php included. Which PHP runs is still runtime.php — see Configuration — so keep the two the same.

These are not project variables. A project variable is something your application reads; a service setting changes the service. They live in the repository because they belong to the code: the upload limit your site was built around is part of the site, not something to remember to set on each new environment.

#The rules

Only the settings listed below. Each service takes a short list, and a deploy that sets anything else refuses, naming the variable and what the service does take. Nothing is accepted and quietly ignored, so a setting that reaches a deploy is a setting that is in effect.

Each value is checked. A setting that takes a number takes a number, a size takes a size, and a pattern that ends up in the service's own configuration file takes only the characters a pattern needs. A value of the wrong shape refuses the deploy, naming it. Everything is one line of text, at most 1,024 characters, and a $ is a dollar sign: values are never expanded, so one setting cannot read another, or anything else on the machine.

They take effect on the next deploy. A service whose settings changed is restarted with them before your code lands. Delete a line and the next deploy puts the default back.

Background work gets the application's settings. The queue worker, your workers and your scheduled jobs are your application run differently. A job given less time or memory than the site would be the one that fails, so they run with whatever you set on php.

Memory is sized from your machine. The settings that decide how much memory a service holds — the database's buffer pool, the cache's limit, Solr's heap, Varnish's storage, PHP's APCu — are set from what you run on, not left at the image's defaults. A service with a machine of its own takes most of it: a cache alone on its machine gets 80% of it, the database 60%. One that shares a machine with your site gets a share of your plan instead, so it can never grow into the memory your site needs. Those of them listed below — the buffer pool, PostgreSQL's shared buffers, Solr's heap, APCu — you can set lower. A higher value is lowered to your share. The cache's limit and Varnish's storage are not settings at all: they are only ever sized.

Production shows no errors on the page. On a production environment PHP does not print errors, startup errors or failed assertions into the response; they still go to the logs. Other environments behave as the image does. Set PHP_DISPLAY_ERRORS if you want something else.

PHP's memory limit is held to your plan. PHP_MEMORY_LIMIT goes through the same rule as runtime.memory_limit: anything above what your plan allows is lowered to it. If the file sets both, runtime.memory_limit wins.

Timeouts are a chain. A slow request passes through Nginx and, if you run it, Varnish before it reaches PHP, and whichever gives up first answers. Raise PHP_MAX_EXECUTION_TIME and NGINX_FASTCGI_READ_TIMEOUT together. With Varnish in front, a page still has 60 seconds to start answering, whatever the other two say. Work that takes longer belongs in a worker.

Your code is never checked for changes while it runs. PHP caches compiled code and would normally check every file for changes on every request. Your code does not change under a running site: a deploy switches to the new release and reloads PHP, which empties the cache. So the check is off everywhere, and there is no setting for it.

#Every setting, by service

A service missing from this list takes no settings. Its page says why.

#Go — golang

Variable	What it does	Unless you set it
GOMEMLIMIT	A soft memory limit for the Go runtime, such as 900MiB.	the image's
GOMAXPROCS	How many threads run Go code at once.	the image's

#MariaDB — mariadb

Variable	What it does	Unless you set it
MYSQL_MAX_ALLOWED_PACKET	The largest single query or row, such as 256M.	256M
MYSQL_INNODB_BUFFER_POOL_SIZE	The database's cache of tables and indexes. Sized from the database's share of the machine unless you set it lower.	sized from your machine
MYSQL_MAX_CONNECTIONS	Connections at once. Each one costs memory whether it is busy or not.	100
MYSQL_SLOW_QUERY_LOG	1 to log queries slower than MYSQL_LONG_QUERY_TIME.	OFF
MYSQL_LONG_QUERY_TIME	Seconds after which a query counts as slow.	2

#Meilisearch — meilisearch

Variable	What it does	Unless you set it
MEILI_MAX_INDEXING_MEMORY	Memory Meilisearch may use while indexing.	the image's
MEILI_LOG_LEVEL	How much Meilisearch logs.	INFO

#MySQL 8 — mysql

Variable	What it does	Unless you set it
MYSQL_MAX_ALLOWED_PACKET	The largest single query or row, such as 256M.	256M
MYSQL_INNODB_BUFFER_POOL_SIZE	The database's cache of tables and indexes. Sized from the database's share of the machine unless you set it lower.	sized from your machine
MYSQL_MAX_CONNECTIONS	Connections at once. Each one costs memory whether it is busy or not.	100
MYSQL_SLOW_QUERY_LOG	1 to log queries slower than MYSQL_LONG_QUERY_TIME.	the image's
MYSQL_LONG_QUERY_TIME	Seconds after which a query counts as slow.	the image's

#Nginx — nginx

Variable	What it does	Unless you set it
NGINX_CLIENT_MAX_BODY_SIZE	The largest request body Nginx passes on, such as 64m. Uploads bigger than this never reach PHP.	32m
NGINX_KEEPALIVE_TIMEOUT	How long an idle browser connection is kept open.	75s
NGINX_FASTCGI_READ_TIMEOUT	How long Nginx waits for PHP to answer, in seconds.	900
NGINX_GZIP_COMP_LEVEL	Compression level, 1 to 6. Higher saves bytes and costs CPU on every response.	1
NGINX_STATIC_EXPIRES	How long browsers may cache static files, such as 7d.	1y
NGINX_ERROR_LOG_LEVEL	How much Nginx logs: error, warn or notice.	error
NGINX_DRUPAL_NOT_FOUND_REGEX	Drupal presets only: paths matching this regex are answered with 404, so source files such as composer.json or .yml are never served.	the image's
NGINX_WP_NOT_FOUND_REGEX	WordPress preset only: paths matching this regex are answered with 404, so files such as composer.json or .sql dumps are never served.	the image's

#Node.js — nodejs

Variable	What it does	Unless you set it
NODE_OPTIONS	Flags for Node itself, such as --max-old-space-size. Debugger flags are refused.	the image's

#OpenSMTPD — opensmtpd

Variable	What it does	Unless you set it
RELAY_HOST	The SMTP server to send through. Without one, mail leaves from the machine's own address.	the image's
RELAY_PORT	Its port, usually 587.	587
RELAY_PROTO	How to connect to it, such as smtp+tls.	smtp+tls
RELAY_USER	The user to log in as. The password is a secret project variable, RELAY_PASSWORD, never a line in the file.	the image's
OPENSMTPD_MAX_MESSAGE_SIZE	The largest message accepted, such as 35M.	35M
OPENSMTPD_EXPIRE	How long undeliverable mail is retried before it bounces.	4d
OPENSMTPD_BOUNCE_WARN	When the sender is warned that a message is still undelivered.	1h, 6h, 2d

#PHP-FPM — php

Variable	What it does	Unless you set it
PHP_MEMORY_LIMIT	Memory one request may use. Held to what your plan allows, and runtime.memory_limit wins when the file sets both.	512M
PHP_MAX_EXECUTION_TIME	Seconds a request may run. Nginx and Varnish keep their own clocks.	120
PHP_POST_MAX_SIZE	The largest request body PHP accepts. At least PHP_UPLOAD_MAX_FILESIZE, and no more than Nginx's NGINX_CLIENT_MAX_BODY_SIZE.	32M
PHP_UPLOAD_MAX_FILESIZE	The largest single uploaded file.	32M
PHP_OPCACHE_MEMORY_CONSUMPTION	Megabytes for compiled code. Raise it when a large codebase no longer fits.	128
PHP_APCU_SHM_SIZE	Shared memory for APCu, the in-process cache. Sized from your machine unless you set it lower.	sized from your machine
PHP_FPM_PM_MAX_CHILDREN	Requests served at once. Each may use up to the memory limit, so this times that has to fit the machine.	8
PHP_DISPLAY_ERRORS	Whether errors are printed into pages. Off unless you turn it on, and it should stay off anywhere a visitor can reach.	Off on production, On elsewhere
PHP_MAX_INPUT_VARS	How many input variables one request may carry. Large forms — Drupal's permissions page, menu editors — need more than the default.	2000

#PostgreSQL — postgres

Variable	What it does	Unless you set it
POSTGRES_MAX_CONNECTIONS	Connections at once.	100
POSTGRES_SHARED_BUFFERS	PostgreSQL's own cache. Sized from the database's share of the machine unless you set it lower.	sized from your machine
POSTGRES_WORK_MEM	Memory for one sort or hash — per operation, per connection, so a small number goes a long way.	5MB

#RabbitMQ — rabbitmq

Variable	What it does	Unless you set it
RABBITMQ_VM_MEMORY_HIGH_WATERMARK	The share of its memory at which RabbitMQ stops accepting messages, such as 0.6. Of the queue machine when it has one, of your plan otherwise.	the image's

#Redis — redis

Variable	What it does	Unless you set it
REDIS_MAXMEMORY_POLICY	What is evicted when the cache is full: allkeys-lru suits a cache, noeviction a store that must not lose keys.	allkeys-lru
REDIS_DATABASES	How many numbered databases exist.	16

#Solr — solr

Variable	What it does	Unless you set it
SOLR_HEAP	Java heap for Solr, such as 1g. Sized from the search machine unless you set it lower.	sized from your machine
SOLR_MODULES	Solr modules to load, comma-separated, such as extraction,langid.	extraction,langid,ltr,analysis-extras

#Valkey — valkey

Variable	What it does	Unless you set it
VALKEY_MAXMEMORY_POLICY	What is evicted when the cache is full: allkeys-lru suits a cache, noeviction a store that must not lose keys.	allkeys-lru
VALKEY_DATABASES	How many numbered databases exist.	16

#Varnish — vinyl

Variable	What it does	Unless you set it
VARNISHD_PARAM_DEFAULT_TTL	How long, in seconds, a page is cached when the application sends no Cache-Control: max-age of its own.	120.000
VARNISH_BACKEND_GRACE	How long an expired page may still be served while a fresh copy is fetched in the background, such as 10m.	2m
VARNISH_CACHE_PER_COUNTRY	Keep a separate cached copy per visitor country, for sites that vary content by country. Set to 1.	the image's
VARNISH_MOBILE_SEPARATE_CASH	Keep a separate cached copy for mobile browsers, for sites that render differently on phones. Set to 1.	the image's
VARNISH_KEEP_ALL_PARAMS	Keep marketing query parameters such as utm_source in the cache key instead of stripping them. Set to 1.	the image's

"Unless you set it" is the platform's value where it sets one. Otherwise it is the image's own default.

#What stays with the platform

Every service takes far more settings than are listed here. The others are held back on purpose. Setting one of them would not tune the service. It would change what the service is, or what it may reach. They fall into a few kinds:

• Where things connect. Hostnames, ports, cluster membership, which backend Varnish sends requests to. The platform addresses every service in your environment. A different value would point it somewhere else, and if that worked, the somewhere else would be another customer's.
• Who and where. Users, file ownership and paths. Your code is mounted read-only at a path the deploy switches atomically, and the services are built around that.
• Credentials. Database passwords, cache passwords, search admin passwords. Generated per environment and handed to your application in its environment. You never need to know them.
• What keeps data safe. How the database flushes to disk, where it stores files, and whether a cache persists. Your backups and restores depend on these, and a faster setting is usually a less durable one.
• Logs. Where logs go and in what format. The platform collects them from a known place, so you can read them without changing your code.
• Admin and debug endpoints. Status pages, debuggers, profilers and cache purging. Each one is a door into a production site, and a door opened by a line in a repository is a door anyone who can push a branch can open.

If you need one of these changed, ask support at support@vallic.com. Tell us what you are trying to do rather than which variable to set. That is usually a setting the platform should own, or one this page should list.