Horizon’s settings tend to fall into three categories:
What follows is an overview of the Horizon and OpenStack-specific settings and a few notes on the Django-related settings.
Note
Prior to the Essex release of Horizon there were settings which controlled whether features such as Object Storage/Swift or Networking/Neutron would be enabled in the OpenStack Dashboard. This code has long since been removed and those pre-Essex settings have no impact now.
In Essex and later, the Service Catalog returned by the Identity Service after a user has successfully authenticated determines the dashboards and panels that will be available within the OpenStack Dashboard. If you are not seeing a particular service you expected make sure your Service Catalog is configured correctly.
The following options are available in order to configure/customize the behavior of your Horizon installation. All of them are contained in the HORIZON_CONFIG dictionary.
Default: None
Horizon Dashboards are automatically discovered in the following way:
By default, these dashboards are ordered alphabetically. However, if a list of dashboard slugs is provided in this setting, the supplied ordering is applied to the list of discovered dashboards. If the list of dashboard slugs is shorter than the number of discovered dashboards, the remaining dashboards are appended in alphabetical order.
The dashboards listed must be in a Python module which is included in the INSTALLED_APPS list and on the Python path.
Default: None
The slug of the dashboard which should act as the first-run/fallback dashboard whenever a user logs in or is otherwise redirected to an ambiguous location.
Default: settings.LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL
This can be either a literal URL path (such as the default), or Python’s dotted string notation representing a function which will evaluate what URL a user should be redirected to based on the attributes of that user.
Default: 10
The maximum number of simultaneous AJAX connections the dashboard may try to make. This is particularly relevant when monitoring a large number of instances, volumes, etc. which are all actively trying to update/change state.
Default: 2500
How frequently resources in transition states should be polled for updates, expressed in milliseconds.
Default: None
If provided, a “Help” link will be displayed in the site header which links to the value of this settings (ideally a URL containing help information).
Default: {'unauthorized': [], 'not_found': [], 'recoverable': []}
A dictionary containing classes of exceptions which Horizon’s centralized exception handling should be aware of.
Default: {'regex': '.*', 'help_text': _("Password is not accepted")}
A dictionary containing a regular expression which will be used for password validation and help text which will be displayed if the password does not pass validation. The help text should describe the password requirements if there are any.
This setting allows you to set rules for passwords if your organization requires them.
Default: "on"
Controls whether browser autocompletion should be enabled on the login form. Valid values are "on" and "off".
Default: True
Enable or disable simplified floating IP address management.
“Simple” floating IP address management means that the user does not ever have to select the specific IP addresses they wish to use, and the process of allocating an IP and assigning it to an instance is one-click.
The “advanced” floating IP management allows users to select the floating IP pool from which the IP should be allocated and to select a specific IP address when associating one with an instance.
Note
Currently “simple” floating IP address management is not compatible with Neutron. There are two reasons for this. First, Neutron does not support the default floating IP pool at the moment. Second, a Neutron floating IP can be associated with each VIF and we need to check whether there is only one VIF for an instance to enable simple association support.
The following settings inform the OpenStack Dashboard of information about the other OpenStack projects which are part of this cloud and control the behavior of specific dashboards, panels, API calls, etc.
Default: 1000
The maximum number of objects (e.g. Swift objects or Glance images) to display on a single page before providing a paging element (a “more” link) to paginate results.
Default: 20
Similar to API_RESULT_LIMIT. This setting currently only controls the Glance image list page size. It will be removed in a future version.
Default: None
A tuple of tuples which define multiple regions. The tuple format is ('http://{{keystone_host}}:5000/v2.0', '{{region_name}}'). If any regions are specified the login form will have a dropdown selector for authenticating to the appropriate region, and there will be a region switcher dropdown in the site header when logged in.
If you do not have multiple regions you should use the OPENSTACK_HOST and OPENSTACK_KEYSTONE_URL settings instead.
Default: {'key':'ram'}
When launching a new instance the default flavor is sorted by RAM usage in ascending order. You can customize the sort order by: id, name, ram, disk and vcpus. Additionally, you can insert any custom callback function, see the description in local_settings.py.example for more information.
This example sorts flavors by vcpus in descending order:
CREATE_INSTANCE_FLAVOR_SORT = {
'key':'vcpus',
'reverse': True,
}
Default: None
A list of dictionaries to add optional categories to the image filters in the Images & Snapshots panel, based on project ownership.
Each dictionary should contain a tenant attribute with the project id, and optionally a text attribute specifying the category name, and an icon attribute that displays an icon in the filter button. The icon names are based on the default icon theme provided by Bootstrap.
Example: [{'text': 'Official', 'tenant': '27d0058849da47c896d205e2fc25a5e8', 'icon': 'icon-ok'}]
Default: "False"
When set, enables the instance action “Retrieve password” allowing password retrieval from metadata service.
Default: "publicURL"
A string which specifies the endpoint type to use for the endpoints in the Keystone service catalog. The default value for all services except for identity is "publicURL" . The default value for the identity service is "internalURL".
Default: "127.0.0.1"
The hostname of the Keystone server used for authentication if you only have one region. This is often the only setting that needs to be set for a basic deployment.
Default:
{
'can_set_mount_point': False,
'can_set_password': False
}
A dictionary containing settings which can be used to identify the capabilities of the hypervisor for Nova.
The Xen Hypervisor has the ability to set the mount point for volumes attached to instances (other Hypervisors currently do not). Setting can_set_mount_point to True will add the option to set the mount point from the UI.
Setting can_set_password to True will enable the option to set an administrator password when launching or rebuilding an instance.
Default:
{
'image_formats': [
('', ''),
('aki', _('AKI - Amazon Kernel Image')),
('ami', _('AMI - Amazon Machine Image')),
('ari', _('ARI - Amazon Ramdisk Image')),
('iso', _('ISO - Optical Disk Image')),
('qcow2', _('QCOW2 - QEMU Emulator')),
('raw', _('Raw')),
('vdi', _('VDI')),
('vhd', _('VHD')),
('vmdk', _('VMDK'))
]
}
Used to customize features related to the image service, such as the list of supported image formats.
Default: {'name': 'native', 'can_edit_user': True, 'can_edit_project': True}
A dictionary containing settings which can be used to identify the capabilities of the auth backend for Keystone.
If Keystone has been configured to use LDAP as the auth backend then set can_edit_user and can_edit_project to False and name to "ldap".
Default: "_member_"
The name of the role which will be assigned to a user when added to a project. This name must correspond to a role name in Keystone.
Default: "http://%s:5000/v2.0" % OPENSTACK_HOST
The full URL for the Keystone endpoint used for authentication. Unless you are using HTTPS, running your Keystone server on a nonstandard port, or using a nonstandard URL scheme you shouldn’t need to touch this setting.
Default: {'enable_lb': False}
A dictionary of settings which can be used to enable optional services provided by neutron. Currently only the load balancer service is available.
Default: None
When unset or set to None the default CA certificate on the system is used for SSL verification.
When set with the path to a custom CA certificate file, this overrides use of the default system CA certificate. This custom certificate is used to verify all connections to openstack services when making API calls.
Default: False
Disable SSL certificate checks in the OpenStack clients (useful for self-signed certificates).
Default: {'identity': 'keystone_policy.json', 'compute': 'nova_policy.json'}
This should essentially be the mapping of the contents of POLICY_FILES_PATH to service types. When policy.json files are added to POLICY_FILES_PATH, they should be included here too.
Default: os.path.join(ROOT_PATH, "conf")
Specifies where service based policy files are located. These are used to define the policy rules actions are verified against.
Default: "1800"
Default:
{
'flavor_keys': [
('quota:read_bytes_sec', _('Quota: Read bytes')),
('quota:write_bytes_sec', _('Quota: Write bytes')),
('quota:cpu_quota', _('Quota: CPU')),
('quota:cpu_period', _('Quota: CPU period')),
('quota:inbound_average', _('Quota: Inbound average')),
('quota:outbound_average', _('Quota: Outbound average'))
]
}
Used to customize flavor extra specs keys
Warning
This is not meant to be anywhere near a complete list of settings for Django. You should always consult the upstream documentation, especially with regards to deployment considerations and security best-practices.
There are a few key settings you should be aware of for development and the most basic of deployments. Further recommendations can be found in the Deploying Horizon section of this documentation.
Default: ['localhost']
This list should contain names (or IP addresses) of the host running the dashboard; if it’s being accessed via name, the DNS name (and probably short-name) should be added, if it’s accessed via IP address, that should be added. The setting may contain more than one entry.
Default: True
Controls whether unhandled exceptions should generate a generic 500 response or present the user with a pretty-formatted debug information page.
This setting should always be set to False for production deployments as the debug page can display sensitive information to users and attackers alike.
This should absolutely be set to a unique (and secret) value for your deployment. Unless you are running a load-balancer with multiple Horizon installations behind it, each Horizon instance should have a unique secret key.
The local_settings.py.example file includes a quick-and-easy way to generate a secret key for a single installation.
These three settings should be configured if you are deploying Horizon with SSL. The values indicated in the default local_settings.py.example file are generally safe to use.
Many dashboards may require their own modifications to the settings, and their installation would therefore require modifying the settings file. This is not optimal, so the dashboards can provide the settings that they require in a separate file. Those files are read at startup and used to modify the default settings.
The default location for the dashboard configuration files is openstack_dashboard/enabled, with another directory, openstack_dashboard/local/enabled for local overrides. Both sets of files will be loaded, but the settings in openstack_dashboard/local/enabled will overwrite the default ones. The settings are applied in alphabetical order of the filenames. If the same dashboard has configuration files in enabled and local/enabled, the local name will be used. Note, that since names of python modules can’t start with a digit, the files are usually named with a leading underscore and a number, so that you can control their order easily.
The files contain following keys:
The name of the dashboard to be added to HORIZON['dashboards']. Required.
If set to True, this dashboard will be set as the default dashboard.
A dictionary of exception classes to be added to HORIZON['exceptions'].
A list of applications to be prepended to INSTALLED_APPS.
If set to True, this dashboard will not be added to the settings.
To disable the Router dashboard locally, create a file openstack_dashboard/local/enabled/_40_router.py with the following content:
DASHBOARD = 'router'
DISABLED = True
To add a Tuskar-UI (Infrastructure) dashboard, you have to install it, and then create a file openstack_dashboard/local/enabled/_50_tuskar.py with:
from tuskar_ui import exceptions
DASHBOARD = 'infrastructure'
ADD_INSTALLED_APPS = [
'tuskar_ui.infrastructure',
]
ADD_EXCEPTIONS = {
'recoverable': exceptions.RECOVERABLE,
'not_found': exceptions.NOT_FOUND,
'unauthorized': exceptions.UNAUTHORIZED,
}
Panels customization can be made by providing a custom python module that contains python code to add or remove panel to/from the dashboard. This requires altering the settings file. For panels provided by third-party, making this changes to add the panel is challenging. Panel configuration files can now be dropped to a specified location and it will be read at startup to alter the dashboard configuration.
The default location for the panel configuration files is openstack_dashboard/enabled, with another directory, openstack_dashboard/local/enabled for local overrides. Both sets of files will be loaded, but the settings in openstack_dashboard/local/enabled will overwrite the default ones. The settings are applied in alphabetical order of the filenames. If the same panel has configuration files in enabled and local/enabled, the local name will be used. Note, that since names of python modules can’t start with a digit, the files are usually named with a leading underscore and a number, so that you can control their order easily.
The files contain following keys:
The name of the panel to be added to HORIZON_CONFIG. Required.
The name of the dashboard the PANEL associated with. Required.
The name of the panel group the PANEL is associated with.
If set, it will update the default panel of the PANEL_DASHBOARD.
Python panel class of the PANEL to be added.
If set to True, the PANEL will be removed from PANEL_DASHBOARD/PANEL_GROUP.
If set to True, this panel configuration will be skipped.
To add a new panel to the Admin panel group in Admin dashboard, create a file openstack_dashboard/local/enabled/_60_admin_add_panel.py with the following content:
PANEL = 'plugin_panel'
PANEL_DASHBOARD = 'admin'
PANEL_GROUP = 'admin'
ADD_PANEL = 'test_panels.plugin_panel.panel.PluginPanel'
To remove Info panel from Admin panel group in Admin dashboard locally, create a file openstack_dashboard/local/enabled/_70_admin_remove_panel.py with the following content:
PANEL = 'info'
PANEL_DASHBOARD = 'admin'
PANEL_GROUP = 'admin'
REMOVE_PANEL = True
To change the default panel of Admin dashboard to Instances panel, create a file openstack_dashboard/local/enabled/_80_admin_default_panel.py with the following content:
PANEL = 'instances'
PANEL_DASHBOARD = 'admin'
PANEL_GROUP = 'admin'
DEFAULT_PANEL = 'instances'
To organize the panels created from the pluggable settings, there is also a way to create panel group though configuration file. This creates an empty panel group to act as placeholder for the panels that can be created later.
The default location for the panel group configuration files is openstack_dashboard/enabled, with another directory, openstack_dashboard/local/enabled for local overrides. Both sets of files will be loaded, but the settings in openstack_dashboard/local/enabled will overwrite the default ones. The settings are applied in alphabetical order of the filenames. If the same panel has configuration files in enabled and local/enabled, the local name will be used. Note, that since names of python modules can’t start with a digit, the files are usually named with a leading underscore and a number, so that you can control their order easily.
When writing configuration files to create panels and panels group, make sure that the panel group configuration file is loaded first because the panel configuration might be referencing it. This can be achieved by providing a file name that will go before the panel configuration file when the files are sorted alphabetically.
The files contain following keys:
The name of the panel group to be added to HORIZON_CONFIG. Required.
The display name of the PANEL_GROUP. Required.
The name of the dashboard the PANEL_GROUP associated with. Required.
If set to True, this panel configuration will be skipped.
To add a new panel group to the Admin dashboard, create a file openstack_dashboard/local/enabled/_90_admin_add_panel_group.py with the following content:
PANEL_GROUP = 'plugin_panel_group'
PANEL_GROUP_NAME = 'Plugin Panel Group'
PANEL_GROUP_DASHBOARD = 'admin'