[redis] Start redis-server with config file

I have my config file at:

root/config/redis.rb

I start redis like this: redis-server

How do I start redis so that it uses my config file?

Also, I hate mucking about with ps -grep to try and find a pid to shut it down. How can I shut down the server by cd'ing into the root and running just one command?

With the puma application server you can run commands like this:

pumactl -F config/puma.rb start
pumactl -F config/puma.rb stop

and pumactl infers the pid from the conf. Can this be the same with redis?

Also I've used this copy-pasted conf from the redis website:

# Redis configuration file example

# Note on units: when memory size is needed, it is possible to specify
# it in the usual form of 1k 5GB 4M and so forth:
#
# 1k => 1000 bytes
# 1kb => 1024 bytes
# 1m => 1000000 bytes
# 1mb => 1024*1024 bytes
# 1g => 1000000000 bytes
# 1gb => 1024*1024*1024 bytes
#
# units are case insensitive so 1GB 1Gb 1gB are all the same.

################################## INCLUDES ###################################

# Include one or more other config files here.  This is useful if you
# have a standard template that goes to all Redis server but also need
# to customize a few per-server settings.  Include files can include
# other files, so use this wisely.
#
# Notice option "include" won't be rewritten by command "CONFIG REWRITE"
# from admin or Redis Sentinel. Since Redis always uses the last processed
# line as value of a configuration directive, you'd better put includes
# at the beginning of this file to avoid overwriting config change at runtime.
#
# If instead you are interested in using includes to override configuration
# options, it is better to use include as the last line.
#
# include /path/to/local.conf
# include /path/to/other.conf

################################ GENERAL  #####################################

# By default Redis does not run as a daemon. Use 'yes' if you need it.
# Note that Redis will write a pid file in /var/run/redis.pid when daemonized.
daemonize no

# When running daemonized, Redis writes a pid file in /var/run/redis.pid by
# default. You can specify a custom pid file location here.
pidfile /var/run/redis.pid

# Accept connections on the specified port, default is 6379.
# If port 0 is specified Redis will not listen on a TCP socket.
port 6379

# TCP listen() backlog.
#
# In high requests-per-second environments you need an high backlog in order
# to avoid slow clients connections issues. Note that the Linux kernel
# will silently truncate it to the value of /proc/sys/net/core/somaxconn so
# make sure to raise both the value of somaxconn and tcp_max_syn_backlog
# in order to get the desired effect.
tcp-backlog 511

# By default Redis listens for connections from all the network interfaces
# available on the server. It is possible to listen to just one or multiple
# interfaces using the "bind" configuration directive, followed by one or
# more IP addresses.
#
# Examples:
#
# bind 192.168.1.100 10.0.0.1
# bind 127.0.0.1

# Specify the path for the Unix socket that will be used to listen for
# incoming connections. There is no default, so Redis will not listen
# on a unix socket when not specified.
#
# unixsocket /tmp/redis.sock
# unixsocketperm 755

# Close the connection after a client is idle for N seconds (0 to disable)
timeout 0

# TCP keepalive.
#
# If non-zero, use SO_KEEPALIVE to send TCP ACKs to clients in absence
# of communication. This is useful for two reasons:
#
# 1) Detect dead peers.
# 2) Take the connection alive from the point of view of network
#    equipment in the middle.
#
# On Linux, the specified value (in seconds) is the period used to send ACKs.
# Note that to close the connection the double of the time is needed.
# On other kernels the period depends on the kernel configuration.
#
# A reasonable value for this option is 60 seconds.
tcp-keepalive 0

# Specify the server verbosity level.
# This can be one of:
# debug (a lot of information, useful for development/testing)
# verbose (many rarely useful info, but not a mess like the debug level)
# notice (moderately verbose, what you want in production probably)
# warning (only very important / critical messages are logged)
loglevel notice

# Specify the log file name. Also the empty string can be used to force
# Redis to log on the standard output. Note that if you use standard
# output for logging but daemonize, logs will be sent to /dev/null
logfile ""

# To enable logging to the system logger, just set 'syslog-enabled' to yes,
# and optionally update the other syslog parameters to suit your needs.
# syslog-enabled no

# Specify the syslog identity.
# syslog-ident redis

# Specify the syslog facility. Must be USER or between LOCAL0-LOCAL7.
# syslog-facility local0

# Set the number of databases. The default database is DB 0, you can select
# a different one on a per-connection basis using SELECT <dbid> where
# dbid is a number between 0 and 'databases'-1
databases 16

################################ SNAPSHOTTING  ################################
#
# Save the DB on disk:
#
#   save <seconds> <changes>
#
#   Will save the DB if both the given number of seconds and the given
#   number of write operations against the DB occurred.
#
#   In the example below the behaviour will be to save:
#   after 900 sec (15 min) if at least 1 key changed
#   after 300 sec (5 min) if at least 10 keys changed
#   after 60 sec if at least 10000 keys changed
#
#   Note: you can disable saving at all commenting all the "save" lines.
#
#   It is also possible to remove all the previously configured save
#   points by adding a save directive with a single empty string argument
#   like in the following example:
#
#   save ""

save 900 1
save 300 10
save 60 10000

# By default Redis will stop accepting writes if RDB snapshots are enabled
# (at least one save point) and the latest background save failed.
# This will make the user aware (in a hard way) that data is not persisting
# on disk properly, otherwise chances are that no one will notice and some
# disaster will happen.
#
# If the background saving process will start working again Redis will
# automatically allow writes again.
#
# However if you have setup your proper monitoring of the Redis server
# and persistence, you may want to disable this feature so that Redis will
# continue to work as usual even if there are problems with disk,
# permissions, and so forth.
stop-writes-on-bgsave-error yes

# Compress string objects using LZF when dump .rdb databases?
# For default that's set to 'yes' as it's almost always a win.
# If you want to save some CPU in the saving child set it to 'no' but
# the dataset will likely be bigger if you have compressible values or keys.
rdbcompression yes

# Since version 5 of RDB a CRC64 checksum is placed at the end of the file.
# This makes the format more resistant to corruption but there is a performance
# hit to pay (around 10%) when saving and loading RDB files, so you can disable it
# for maximum performances.
#
# RDB files created with checksum disabled have a checksum of zero that will
# tell the loading code to skip the check.
rdbchecksum yes

# The filename where to dump the DB
dbfilename dump.rdb

# The working directory.
#
# The DB will be written inside this directory, with the filename specified
# above using the 'dbfilename' configuration directive.
# 
# The Append Only File will also be created inside this directory.
# 
# Note that you must specify a directory here, not a file name.
dir ./

################################# REPLICATION #################################

# Master-Slave replication. Use slaveof to make a Redis instance a copy of
# another Redis server. Note that the configuration is local to the slave
# so for example it is possible to configure the slave to save the DB with a
# different interval, or to listen to another port, and so on.
#
# slaveof <masterip> <masterport>

# If the master is password protected (using the "requirepass" configuration
# directive below) it is possible to tell the slave to authenticate before
# starting the replication synchronization process, otherwise the master will
# refuse the slave request.
#
# masterauth <master-password>

# When a slave loses its connection with the master, or when the replication
# is still in progress, the slave can act in two different ways:
#
# 1) if slave-serve-stale-data is set to 'yes' (the default) the slave will
#    still reply to client requests, possibly with out of date data, or the
#    data set may just be empty if this is the first synchronization.
#
# 2) if slave-serve-stale-data is set to 'no' the slave will reply with
#    an error "SYNC with master in progress" to all the kind of commands
#    but to INFO and SLAVEOF.
#
slave-serve-stale-data yes

# You can configure a slave instance to accept writes or not. Writing against
# a slave instance may be useful to store some ephemeral data (because data
# written on a slave will be easily deleted after resync with the master) but
# may also cause problems if clients are writing to it because of a
# misconfiguration.
#
# Since Redis 2.6 by default slaves are read-only.
#
# Note: read only slaves are not designed to be exposed to untrusted clients
# on the internet. It's just a protection layer against misuse of the instance.
# Still a read only slave exports by default all the administrative commands
# such as CONFIG, DEBUG, and so forth. To a limited extent you can improve
# security of read only slaves using 'rename-command' to shadow all the
# administrative / dangerous commands.
slave-read-only yes

# Slaves send PINGs to server in a predefined interval. It's possible to change
# this interval with the repl_ping_slave_period option. The default value is 10
# seconds.
#
# repl-ping-slave-period 10

# The following option sets the replication timeout for:
#
# 1) Bulk transfer I/O during SYNC, from the point of view of slave.
# 2) Master timeout from the point of view of slaves (data, pings).
# 3) Slave timeout from the point of view of masters (REPLCONF ACK pings).
#
# It is important to make sure that this value is greater than the value
# specified for repl-ping-slave-period otherwise a timeout will be detected
# every time there is low traffic between the master and the slave.
#
# repl-timeout 60

# Disable TCP_NODELAY on the slave socket after SYNC?
#
# If you select "yes" Redis will use a smaller number of TCP packets and
# less bandwidth to send data to slaves. But this can add a delay for
# the data to appear on the slave side, up to 40 milliseconds with
# Linux kernels using a default configuration.
#
# If you select "no" the delay for data to appear on the slave side will
# be reduced but more bandwidth will be used for replication.
#
# By default we optimize for low latency, but in very high traffic conditions
# or when the master and slaves are many hops away, turning this to "yes" may
# be a good idea.
repl-disable-tcp-nodelay no

# Set the replication backlog size. The backlog is a buffer that accumulates
# slave data when slaves are disconnected for some time, so that when a slave
# wants to reconnect again, often a full resync is not needed, but a partial
# resync is enough, just passing the portion of data the slave missed while
# disconnected.
#
# The biggest the replication backlog, the longer the time the slave can be
# disconnected and later be able to perform a partial resynchronization.
#
# The backlog is only allocated once there is at least a slave connected.
#
# repl-backlog-size 1mb

# After a master has no longer connected slaves for some time, the backlog
# will be freed. The following option configures the amount of seconds that
# need to elapse, starting from the time the last slave disconnected, for
# the backlog buffer to be freed.
#
# A value of 0 means to never release the backlog.
#
# repl-backlog-ttl 3600

# The slave priority is an integer number published by Redis in the INFO output.
# It is used by Redis Sentinel in order to select a slave to promote into a
# master if the master is no longer working correctly.
#
# A slave with a low priority number is considered better for promotion, so
# for instance if there are three slaves with priority 10, 100, 25 Sentinel will
# pick the one with priority 10, that is the lowest.
#
# However a special priority of 0 marks the slave as not able to perform the
# role of master, so a slave with priority of 0 will never be selected by
# Redis Sentinel for promotion.
#
# By default the priority is 100.
slave-priority 100

# It is possible for a master to stop accepting writes if there are less than
# N slaves connected, having a lag less or equal than M seconds.
#
# The N slaves need to be in "online" state.
#
# The lag in seconds, that must be <= the specified value, is calculated from
# the last ping received from the slave, that is usually sent every second.
#
# This option does not GUARANTEES that N replicas will accept the write, but
# will limit the window of exposure for lost writes in case not enough slaves
# are available, to the specified number of seconds.
#
# For example to require at least 3 slaves with a lag <= 10 seconds use:
#
# min-slaves-to-write 3
# min-slaves-max-lag 10
#
# Setting one or the other to 0 disables the feature.
#
# By default min-slaves-to-write is set to 0 (feature disabled) and
# min-slaves-max-lag is set to 10.

################################## SECURITY ###################################

# Require clients to issue AUTH <PASSWORD> before processing any other
# commands.  This might be useful in environments in which you do not trust
# others with access to the host running redis-server.
#
# This should stay commented out for backward compatibility and because most
# people do not need auth (e.g. they run their own servers).
# 
# Warning: since Redis is pretty fast an outside user can try up to
# 150k passwords per second against a good box. This means that you should
# use a very strong password otherwise it will be very easy to break.
#
# requirepass foobared

# Command renaming.
#
# It is possible to change the name of dangerous commands in a shared
# environment. For instance the CONFIG command may be renamed into something
# hard to guess so that it will still be available for internal-use tools
# but not available for general clients.
#
# Example:
#
# rename-command CONFIG b840fc02d524045429941cc15f59e41cb7be6c52
#
# It is also possible to completely kill a command by renaming it into
# an empty string:
#
# rename-command CONFIG ""
#
# Please note that changing the name of commands that are logged into the
# AOF file or transmitted to slaves may cause problems.

################################### LIMITS ####################################

# Set the max number of connected clients at the same time. By default
# this limit is set to 10000 clients, however if the Redis server is not
# able to configure the process file limit to allow for the specified limit
# the max number of allowed clients is set to the current file limit
# minus 32 (as Redis reserves a few file descriptors for internal uses).
#
# Once the limit is reached Redis will close all the new connections sending
# an error 'max number of clients reached'.
#
# maxclients 10000

# Don't use more memory than the specified amount of bytes.
# When the memory limit is reached Redis will try to remove keys
# according to the eviction policy selected (see maxmemory-policy).
#
# If Redis can't remove keys according to the policy, or if the policy is
# set to 'noeviction', Redis will start to reply with errors to commands
# that would use more memory, like SET, LPUSH, and so on, and will continue
# to reply to read-only commands like GET.
#
# This option is usually useful when using Redis as an LRU cache, or to set
# a hard memory limit for an instance (using the 'noeviction' policy).
#
# WARNING: If you have slaves attached to an instance with maxmemory on,
# the size of the output buffers needed to feed the slaves are subtracted
# from the used memory count, so that network problems / resyncs will
# not trigger a loop where keys are evicted, and in turn the output
# buffer of slaves is full with DELs of keys evicted triggering the deletion
# of more keys, and so forth until the database is completely emptied.
#
# In short... if you have slaves attached it is suggested that you set a lower
# limit for maxmemory so that there is some free RAM on the system for slave
# output buffers (but this is not needed if the policy is 'noeviction').
#
# maxmemory <bytes>

# MAXMEMORY POLICY: how Redis will select what to remove when maxmemory
# is reached. You can select among five behaviors:
# 
# volatile-lru -> remove the key with an expire set using an LRU algorithm
# allkeys-lru -> remove any key accordingly to the LRU algorithm
# volatile-random -> remove a random key with an expire set
# allkeys-random -> remove a random key, any key
# volatile-ttl -> remove the key with the nearest expire time (minor TTL)
# noeviction -> don't expire at all, just return an error on write operations
# 
# Note: with any of the above policies, Redis will return an error on write
#       operations, when there are not suitable keys for eviction.
#
#       At the date of writing this commands are: set setnx setex append
#       incr decr rpush lpush rpushx lpushx linsert lset rpoplpush sadd
#       sinter sinterstore sunion sunionstore sdiff sdiffstore zadd zincrby
#       zunionstore zinterstore hset hsetnx hmset hincrby incrby decrby
#       getset mset msetnx exec sort
#
# The default is:
#
# maxmemory-policy volatile-lru

# LRU and minimal TTL algorithms are not precise algorithms but approximated
# algorithms (in order to save memory), so you can select as well the sample
# size to check. For instance for default Redis will check three keys and
# pick the one that was used less recently, you can change the sample size
# using the following configuration directive.
#
# maxmemory-samples 3

############################## APPEND ONLY MODE ###############################

# By default Redis asynchronously dumps the dataset on disk. This mode is
# good enough in many applications, but an issue with the Redis process or
# a power outage may result into a few minutes of writes lost (depending on
# the configured save points).
#
# The Append Only File is an alternative persistence mode that provides
# much better durability. For instance using the default data fsync policy
# (see later in the config file) Redis can lose just one second of writes in a
# dramatic event like a server power outage, or a single write if something
# wrong with the Redis process itself happens, but the operating system is
# still running correctly.
#
# AOF and RDB persistence can be enabled at the same time without problems.
# If the AOF is enabled on startup Redis will load the AOF, that is the file
# with the better durability guarantees.
#
# Please check http://redis.io/topics/persistence for more information.

appendonly no

# The name of the append only file (default: "appendonly.aof")

appendfilename "appendonly.aof"

# The fsync() call tells the Operating System to actually write data on disk
# instead to wait for more data in the output buffer. Some OS will really flush 
# data on disk, some other OS will just try to do it ASAP.
#
# Redis supports three different modes:
#
# no: don't fsync, just let the OS flush the data when it wants. Faster.
# always: fsync after every write to the append only log . Slow, Safest.
# everysec: fsync only one time every second. Compromise.
#
# The default is "everysec", as that's usually the right compromise between
# speed and data safety. It's up to you to understand if you can relax this to
# "no" that will let the operating system flush the output buffer when
# it wants, for better performances (but if you can live with the idea of
# some data loss consider the default persistence mode that's snapshotting),
# or on the contrary, use "always" that's very slow but a bit safer than
# everysec.
#
# More details please check the following article:
# http://antirez.com/post/redis-persistence-demystified.html
#
# If unsure, use "everysec".

# appendfsync always
appendfsync everysec
# appendfsync no

# When the AOF fsync policy is set to always or everysec, and a background
# saving process (a background save or AOF log background rewriting) is
# performing a lot of I/O against the disk, in some Linux configurations
# Redis may block too long on the fsync() call. Note that there is no fix for
# this currently, as even performing fsync in a different thread will block
# our synchronous write(2) call.
#
# In order to mitigate this problem it's possible to use the following option
# that will prevent fsync() from being called in the main process while a
# BGSAVE or BGREWRITEAOF is in progress.
#
# This means that while another child is saving, the durability of Redis is
# the same as "appendfsync none". In practical terms, this means that it is
# possible to lose up to 30 seconds of log in the worst scenario (with the
# default Linux settings).
# 
# If you have latency problems turn this to "yes". Otherwise leave it as
# "no" that is the safest pick from the point of view of durability.

no-appendfsync-on-rewrite no

# Automatic rewrite of the append only file.
# Redis is able to automatically rewrite the log file implicitly calling
# BGREWRITEAOF when the AOF log size grows by the specified percentage.
# 
# This is how it works: Redis remembers the size of the AOF file after the
# latest rewrite (if no rewrite has happened since the restart, the size of
# the AOF at startup is used).
#
# This base size is compared to the current size. If the current size is
# bigger than the specified percentage, the rewrite is triggered. Also
# you need to specify a minimal size for the AOF file to be rewritten, this
# is useful to avoid rewriting the AOF file even if the percentage increase
# is reached but it is still pretty small.
#
# Specify a percentage of zero in order to disable the automatic AOF
# rewrite feature.

auto-aof-rewrite-percentage 100
auto-aof-rewrite-min-size 64mb

notify-keyspace-events ""

############################### ADVANCED CONFIG ###############################

# Hashes are encoded using a memory efficient data structure when they have a
# small number of entries, and the biggest entry does not exceed a given
# threshold. These thresholds can be configured using the following directives.
hash-max-ziplist-entries 512
hash-max-ziplist-value 64

# Similarly to hashes, small lists are also encoded in a special way in order
# to save a lot of space. The special representation is only used when
# you are under the following limits:
list-max-ziplist-entries 512
list-max-ziplist-value 64

aof-rewrite-incremental-fsync yes

And I've tweaked it to daemonize redis when it starts. Just wondering if there are any gotchas here? I've got a server that serves about 30 people simultaneously, and all I'm using redis for is sending asyncronous emails to people. Should this config do the trick?

I think that you should make the reference to your config file

26399:C 16 Jan 08:51:13.413 # Warning: no config file specified, using the default config. In order to specify a config file use ./redis-server /path/to/redis.conf

you can try to start your redis server like

./redis-server /path/to/redis-stable/redis.conf

To start redis with a config file all you need to do is specifiy the config file as an argument:

redis-server /root/config/redis.rb

Instead of using and killing PID's I would suggest creating an init script for your service

I would suggest taking a look at the Installing Redis more properly section of http://redis.io/topics/quickstart. It will walk you through setting up an init script with redis so you can just do something like service redis_server start and service redis_server stop to control your server.

I am not sure exactly what distro you are using, that article describes instructions for a Debian based distro. If you are are using a RHEL/Fedora distro let me know, I can provide you with instructions for the last couple of steps, the config file and most of the other steps will be the same.