Setting NODE_OPTIONS with Debian/Ubuntu packages

[zerkms]

Preamble: I haven't found a repository with /etc/init.d/kibana file so posting it here

Currently there is no way to pass NODE_OPTIONS environment variable to the kibana process other than either hacking init.d script or the kibana executable file. Both are rarely acceptable.

But if the init.d script had

exec env NODE_OPTIONS=$NODE_OPTIONS \"$program\" $args

instead of

exec \"$program\" $args

then it would be a natural way to change it with /etc/default/kibana (which is already imported but useless).

What do you think of this change?

[exowaucka]

This is a REALLY easy problem to solve. If somebody can show me where the packaging stuff is, I'll do it myself and make a pull request.

[jbudz]

Init scripts are generated by https://github.com/jordansissel/pleaserun, our arguments are at https://github.com/elastic/kibana/blob/master/tasks/build/pleaserun.js.

[exowaucka]

It looks like pleaserun will generate systemd service files that do the right thing, but the sysv init scripts do not do the right thing. This is in part due to a difference in how the two systems work. systemd service files can specify a file that contains NAME=value pairs, which get inserted into the environment of the daemon process. The sysv init scripts generated by pleaserun, however, simply source the /etc/default and sysconfig files, which does not lead to the variables specified in them ending up in the program's environment. Changing the contents of these files to say export NAME=value instead of just NAME=value would work for sysv, but it would break systemd.

I guess the best thing to do would be to add an option to pleaserun that lists environment variables that need to be exported (if present) to the daemon process and then update Kibana's pleaserun.js to use it. This would generate export statements in sysv init scripts after sourcing the variable files and be a no-op in systemd service files. It's not the nicest solution, since it limits the user to whatever environment variables the person who generated the init script happened to think of, but most Linux users will be using systemd anyway.

I will create a PR here once I've gotten the change into pleaserun.

[exowaucka]

pleaserun PR: jordansissel/pleaserun#119