gRPC environment variables

gRPC C core based implementations (those contained in this repository) expose some configuration as environment variables that can be set.

• http_proxy The URI of the proxy to use for HTTP CONNECT support.

• GRPC_ABORT_ON_LEAKS A debugging aid to cause a call to abort() when gRPC objects are leaked past grpc_shutdown(). Set to 1 to cause the abort, if unset or 0 it does not abort the process.

• GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS The path to find the credentials to use when Google credentials are created

• GRPC_SSL_CIPHER_SUITES A colon separated list of cipher suites to use with OpenSSL Defaults to: ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384

• GRPC_DEFAULT_SSL_ROOTS_FILE_PATH PEM file to load SSL roots from

• GRPC_POLL_STRATEGY [posix-style environments only] Declares which polling engines to try when starting gRPC. This is a comma-separated list of engines, which are tried in priority order first -> last. Available polling engines include:

  • epoll (linux-only) - a polling engine based around the epoll family of system calls
  • poll - a portable polling engine based around poll(), intended to be a fallback engine when nothing better exists
  • legacy - the (deprecated) original polling engine for gRPC

• GRPC_TRACE A comma separated list of tracers that provide additional insight into how gRPC C core is processing requests via debug logs. Available tracers include:

  • api - traces api calls to the C core
  • bdp_estimator - traces behavior of bdp estimation logic
  • call_error - traces the possible errors contributing to final call status
  • channel - traces operations on the C core channel stack
  • client_channel - traces client channel activity, including resolver and load balancing policy interaction
  • combiner - traces combiner lock state
  • compression - traces compression operations
  • connectivity_state - traces connectivity state changes to channels
  • channel_stack_builder - traces information about channel stacks being built
  • http - traces state in the http2 transport engine
  • http1 - traces HTTP/1.x operations performed by gRPC
  • inproc - traces the in-process transport
  • flowctl - traces http2 flow control
  • op_failure - traces error information when failure is pushed onto a completion queue
  • round_robin - traces the round_robin load balancing policy
  • pick_first - traces the pick first load balancing policy
  • resource_quota - trace resource quota objects internals
  • glb - traces the grpclb load balancer
  • queue_pluck
  • queue_timeout
  • server_channel - lightweight trace of significant server channel events
  • secure_endpoint - traces bytes flowing through encrypted channels
  • timer - timers (alarms) in the grpc internals
  • timer_check - more detailed trace of timer logic in grpc internals
  • transport_security - traces metadata about secure channel establishment
  • tcp - traces bytes in and out of a channel
  • tsi - traces tsi transport security

  The following tracers will only run in binaries built in DEBUG mode. This is accomplished by invoking CONFIG=dbg make <target>

  • alarm_refcount - refcounting traces for grpc_alarm structure
  • metadata - tracks creation and mutation of metadata
  • closure - tracks closure creation, scheduling, and completion
  • pending_tags - traces still-in-progress tags on completion queues
  • polling - traces the selected polling engine
  • queue_refcount
  • error_refcount
  • stream_refcount
  • workqueue_refcount
  • fd_refcount
  • cq_refcount
  • auth_context_refcount
  • security_connector_refcount
  • resolver_refcount
  • lb_policy_refcount
  • chttp2_refcount

  ‘all’ can additionally be used to turn all traces on. Individual traces can be disabled by prefixing them with ‘-’.

  ‘refcount’ will turn on all of the tracers for refcount debugging.

  if ‘list_tracers’ is present, then all of the available tracers will be printed when the program starts up.

  Example: export GRPC_TRACE=all,-pending_tags

• GRPC_VERBOSITY Default gRPC logging verbosity - one of:

  • DEBUG - log all gRPC messages
  • INFO - log INFO and ERROR message
  • ERROR - log only errors

• GRPC_TRACE_FUZZER if set, the fuzzers will output trace (it is usually supressed).

• GRPC_DNS_RESOLVER Declares which DNS resolver to use. The default is ares if gRPC is built with c-ares support. Otherwise, the value of this environment variable is ignored. Available DNS resolver include:

  • native (default)- a DNS resolver based around getaddrinfo(), creates a new thread to perform name resolution
  • ares - a DNS resolver based around the c-ares library