Deployment Configuration#

Dashboard Configuration Persistence#

The ESSlivedata dashboard stores user configurations (workflow settings, plotter configurations, etc.) locally on disk to preserve settings across restarts.

Configuration Directory#

Dashboard configurations are stored in a per-instrument configuration directory. By default, this directory is resolved as follows:

  1. If LIVEDATA_CONFIG_DIR environment variable is set, use $LIVEDATA_CONFIG_DIR/<instrument>/

  2. Otherwise, use the platform-specific user config directory (e.g., ~/.config/esslivedata/<instrument>/ on Linux)

The platform-specific directory is determined using the platformdirs library, which follows standard conventions for each operating system (XDG on Linux, AppData on Windows, etc.).

Example: Setting a Custom Configuration Directory#

To store configurations in a custom location, set the LIVEDATA_CONFIG_DIR environment variable:

export LIVEDATA_CONFIG_DIR=/var/lib/esslivedata/configs
python -m ess.livedata.dashboard.reduction --instrument dummy

This will store all dashboard configurations for the dummy instrument in /var/lib/esslivedata/configs/dummy/.

Configuration Files#

The configuration directory contains YAML files for different types of configurations:

  • workflow_configs.yaml: Workflow parameter settings

  • plotter_configs.yaml: Plotter/visualization configurations

Each file is automatically created and managed by the dashboard. Configurations are persisted after each modification using atomic file operations (write to temp file, then rename) to prevent corruption if the process crashes during a write.