CONFIGURATION.md

Configuration options

Config file

By default karma will try to read configuration file named karma.yaml from current directory. Configuration file uses YAML format and it needs to have .yaml extension. Custom filename and directory can be passed via command line flags or environment variables:

• --config.file flag or CONFIG_FILE env variable - path to the config file

Example with flags:

karma --config.file docs/example.yaml

Example with environment variables:

CONFIG_FILE="docs/example.yaml"

Authentication

authentication sections allows enabling authentication support in karma. When set users will be required to authenticate when trying to access karma. There are currently two supported authentication methods:

• Basic HTTP Authentication. Karma will be performing authentication using configured list of username & password pairs. This method is only recommended for testing.
• External authentication via headers. Karma doesn't perform any authentication itself, it is done by a frontend service (SSO or nginx reverse proxy) that sets a header with username on every request.

Only one method can be enabled in the config. Enabling authentication will also force silences to be created with usernames passed from credentials. Syntax:

authentication:
  header:
    name: string
    value_re: regex
    group_name: string
    group_value_re: regex
    group_value_separator: string
  basicAuth:
    users:
      - username: string
        password: string

• authentication:users:header:name - name of the header that will contain the username. If this header is missing from a request access will be forbidden. When set header authentication is used.
• authentication:users:header:value_re - regex used to extract the username from the request header value (when authentication:users:header:name is set). It must include one numbered capturing group, whatever is matched by that group will be used as the silence form author field. All regexes are anchored. This option must be set when authentication:users:header:name is set.
• authentication:users:header:group_name - name of the header that will contain any groups the user has.
• authentication:users:header:group_value_re - Similar to authentication:users:header:value_re, but for groups instead of usernames. Must be set when authentication:users:header:group_name is set.
• authentication:users:header:group_value_separator - This will be used to split the group header to multiple group names. The split is done after evaluating the value regex. Default value is " ".
• authentication:users - list of users (username & password) allowed to login. Passwords are stored plain without any encryption. When set HTTP basic authentication will be used.

Defaults:

authentication:
  header:
    name: ""
    value_re: ""
  basicAuth:
    users: []

Example where HTTP Basic Authentication will be used with a list of username and password pairs set in karma config file.

authentication:
  basicAuth:
    users:
      - username: alice
        password: secret
      - username: bob
        password: moreSecret

Example where the X-Auth header will be used for authentication, raw header value will be used as username.

authentication:
  header:
    name: X-Auth
    value_re: ^(.+)$

Example where the X-Auth-User and X-Auth-Groups headers will be used to set username and list of groups. This assume that X-Auth-Groups value has Groups: foo,bar syntax, where foo and bar are two groups user belongs to.

authentication:
  header:
    name: X-Auth-User
    value_re: ^(.+)$
    group_name: X-Auth-Groups
    group_value_re: 'Groups: (.+)'
    group_value_separator: ','

Authorization

authorization section allows to configure authorization groups used in silence ACL rules. Syntax:

authorization:
  acl:
    silences: string
  groups:
    - name: string
      members: list of strings

• acl:silences - path to silence ACL configuration file, see ACLs for details
• groups - list of group definitons, each group must have a name and members list. name will be used in silence ACL rules, members list should contain list of user names as passed from authentication layer.

Example with two groups using basic auth users and silences ACL config:

authentication:
  basicAuth:
    users:
      - username: alice
        password: secret
      - username: bob
        password: secret
      - username: john
        password: secret
authorization:
  acl:
    silences: /etc/karma/acls.yaml
  groups:
    - name: admins
      members:
        - alice
        - bob
    - name: users
      members:
        - john

Alertmanagers

alertmanager section allows setting Alertmanager servers that should be queried for alerts. You can configure one or more Alertmanager servers, alerts with identical label set will be deduplicated and labeled with each Alertmanager server they were observed at. This allows using karma to collect alerts from a pair of Alertmanager instances running in HA mode. Syntax:

alertmanager:
  interval: duration
  servers:
    - name: string
      cluster: string
      uri: string
      external_uri: string
      timeout: duration
      proxy: bool
      readonly: bool
      tls:
        ca: string
        cert: string
        key: string
        insecureSkipVerify: bool
      proxy_url: string
      headers:
        any: string
      cors:
        credentials: string
      healthcheck:
        visible: bool
        filters: map (string: list of strings)

• interval - how often alerts should be refreshed, a string in time.Duration format. If set to 1m karma will query every Alertmanager server once a minute. This is global setting applied to every Alertmanager server. All instances will be queried in parallel. Note that the maximum value for this option is 15m. The UI has a watchdog that tracks the timestamp of the last pull. If the UI does not receive updates for more than 15 minutes it will print an error and reload the page.

• name - name of this Alertmanager server, will be used as a label added to every alert in the UI and for filtering alerts using @alertmanager=NAME filter

• cluster - this option can be set to give Alertmanager clusters custom names in the UI. If there are multiple alertmanager servers configured in karma config that are part of the same HA cluster then this option should be set to the same value for all of them. If cluster option isn't set a name will be generated for each detected cluster.

• uri - base URI of this Alertmanager server. Supported URI schemes are http:// and https://. If URI contains basic auth info (https://user:password@alertmanager.example.com) and you don't want it to be visible to users then ensure proxy: true is also set in order to avoid leaking auth information to the browser. Note: if URI contains username and password and proxy option is NOT enabled (see below), then the username & password information will be stripped from the URI and Authorization header using Basic Auth will be set for all in browser requests.

• external_uri - this option allows to override base URI of this Alertmanager used for browser links and also silence requests (but only when proxy mode is not enabled).

• timeout - timeout for requests send to this Alertmanager server, a string in time.Duration format.

• proxy - if enabled requests from user browsers to this Alertmanager will be proxied via karma. This applies to requests made when managing silences via karma (creating or expiring silences). This option cannot be used when readonly is enabled.

• readonly - set this Alertmanager upstream to a read only mode. This will disallow silence creation or editing. This option cannot be used when proxy is enabled.

• tls:ca - path to CA certificate used to establish TLS connection to this Alertmanager instance (for URIs using https:// scheme). If unset or empty string is set then Go will try to find system CA certificates using well known paths.

• tls:cert - path to a TLS client certificate file to use when establishing TLS connections to this Alertmanager instance if it requires a TLS client authentication. Note that this option requires tls:key to be also set.

• tls:key - path to a TLS client key file to use when establishing TLS connections to this Alertmanager instance if it requires a TLS client authentication. Note that this option requires tls:cert to be also set.

• tls:insecureSkipVerify - disable server certificate validation, can be set to allow using self-signed certs, use at your own risk

• proxy_url - sets a proxy for HTTP client used for making requests to the upstream server. This can be used to access servers available via SOCKS5 proxy.

• headers - a map with a list of key: values which are header: value. These custom headers will be sent with every request to the alert manager instance. NOTE: these headers are only sent for alertmanager requests, they are NOT set on requests send to Prometheus server when querying alert history. Please see history:rewrite section below if you want to set headers for Prometheus requests.

• cors:credentials - sets the CORS credentials settings for browser requests, see docs for the list of possible values. By default credentials are included in all requests (include), set it to omit or same-origin if Alertmanager is configured to respond with Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *, see docs.

• healthcheck:visible - enable this option if you want healthcheck:filters alerts to be visible in karma UI. An alternative to enabling this option is to route healcheck alerts to alertmanager receiver that isn't visible using default karma filters.

• healthcheck:filters - define healtchecks using alert filters. When set karma will search for alerts matching defined filters and show an error if it doesn't match anything. This can be used with a Dead man's switch style alert to notify karma users that there's a problem with alerting pipeline. Syntax for this option is a map where key is the name of the filter set (used in the UI when showing errors) and the value is a list of filters.

  Example:

  • Setup always on alert in each Prometheus server (prom1 and prom2):

    - alert: DeadMansSwitch
      expr: vector(1)

  • Add healtcheck configuration to karma:

    alertmanager:
      servers:
        - name: am
          uri: https://alertmanager.example.com
          healthcheck:
            filters:
              prom1:
                - alertname=DeadMansSwitch
                - instance=prom1
              prom2:
                - alertname=DeadMansSwitch
                - instance=prom2

  If any of these alerts is missing from alertmanager karma will show a warning in the UI.

Note: there are multiple supported combination of URI settings which result in a slightly different behavior. Settings that control it are:

• uri - this option tells karma backend the URI that should be used to collect all alerts and silence data from given Alertmanager instance. This setting is required.
• proxy - this option when set to true enables karma backend to proxy all silence management requests (creating, editing or deleting silences via karma UI), so when the user creates a silence via karma UI the browser makes a request to karma backend, the backend then forwards this request to the Alertmanager using the value of uri option as the URI. When this option is set to false all browser requests will use uri value. This setting is optional, default value for it is false.
• external_uri - this option tells karma how the browser should connect to given Alertmanager instance, it can be used for silence management requests (creating, editing or deleting silences via karma UI) and how to generate links to silences in Alertmanager web UI. Behavior of this option depends on the value of proxy setting. When proxy mode is enabled:
  • silence management requests will use karma backend URI
  • silence links to Alertmanager web UI will use external_uri value as base URI When proxy mode is disabled:
  • silence management requests will use external_uri value as base URI
  • silence links to Alertmanager web UI will use external_uri value as base URI

Breakdown of all combination of settings:

1. Only uri is set:

   uri: http://localhost:123

   Karma would use those URIs for:

   Backend	Silence management	Silence links
   http://localhost:123	http://localhost:123	http://localhost:123

2. Proxy mode is enabled:

   uri: http://localhost:123
   proxy: true

   Karma would use those URIs for:

   Backend	Silence management	Silence links
   http://localhost:123	Karma internal URI	http://localhost:123

3. external_uri is set, but proxy mode is disabled:

   uri: http://localhost:123
   external_uri: http://example.com

   Karma would use those URIs for:

   Backend	Silence management	Silence links
   http://localhost:123	http://example.com	http://example.com

4. Proxy mode is enabled and external_uri is set:

   uri: http://localhost:123
   proxy: true
   external_uri: http://example.com

   Karma would use those URIs for:

   Backend	Silence management	Silence links
   http://localhost:123	Karma internal URI	http://example.com

5. ReadOnly mode is enabled:

uri: http://localhost:123
readonly: true

Karma would use those URIs for:

Backend	Silence management	Silence links
http://localhost:123	Disabled	http://localhost:123

Example with two production Alertmanager instances running in HA mode and a staging instance that is also proxied and requires a custom auth header:

alertmanager:
  interval: 1m
  servers:
    - name: production1
      uri: https://alertmanager1.prod.example.com
      timeout: 20s
      proxy: false
    - name: production2
      uri: https://alertmanager2.prod.example.com
      timeout: 20s
      proxy: false
    - name: staging
      uri: https://alertmanager.staging.example.com
      timeout: 30s
      proxy: true
      tls:
        ca: /etc/ssl/staging-ca.crt
      headers:
        X-Auth-Token: aValidToken
    - name: protected
      uri: https://alertmanager-auth.prod.example.com
      timeout: 20s
      tls:
        cert: /etc/ssl/client.pem
        key: /etc/ssl/client.key
    - name: self-signed
      uri: https://test.example.com
      tls:
        insecureSkipVerify: true
    - name: socks5
      uri: https://internal.address
      proxy_url: socks5://proxy.local:5000

Defaults:

alertmanager:
  interval: 1m
  servers: []

There is no default for alertmanager.servers and it's a required option for setting multiple Alertmanager servers. For cases where only a single server needs to be configured without a config file see Simplified Configuration.

Alert acknowledgement

Prometheus Alertmanager allows alerts to be in 3 states:

• active - when alert is firing
• suppressed - when alert is either silenced by a silence rule or inhibited by another alert using inhibition rules
• unprocessed - initial state for new alerts before they are checked against all silence rules so Alertmanager doesn't yet know if the alert should be active or suppressed

A silence rule can be used to mark an alert as acknowledged and being worked on. To simplify creating of such silences karma provides a one click button that will create a silence matching alert group it was clicked for. alertAcknowledgement allows to enable this feature and customize it's configuration. Syntax:

alertAcknowledgement:
  enabled: bool
  duration: duration
  author: string
  comment: string

• enabled - setting it to true will enable creation of short lived acknowledgement silences.
• duration - duration for acknowledgement silences, value is a string in time.Duration format.
• author - default author for acknowledgement silences. If user set the author field on the silence form then that value will be used instead.
• comment - custom comment used for acknowledgement silences (optional). If the comment contains %NOW% it will be replaced by current timestamp with UTC timezone, to use timestamp with local timezone use %NOWLOC%.

Defaults:

alertAcknowledgement:
  enabled: false
  duration: 15m0s
  author: karma
  comment: ACK! This alert was acknowledged using karma on %NOW%

A common problem is setting a correct duration for the silence. If set for too short it can expire before the issue is resolved, and will require re-silencing all the alerts. If set for too long it mask the same problem reoccurring in the future. This requires user to expire the silence once the issue is resolved.

kthxbye is a tiny daemon that can help with managing short lived acknowledged silences. It will continuously extend short lived acknowledgement silences if there are alerts firing against those silences, which means that the user doesn't need to worry about setting proper duration for such silences. To use it run an instance of kthxbye with every alertmanager instance or cluster and configure it to use the same comment prefix in comment. With this setup when user clicks to acknowledge an alert karma will create a short lived silence and kthxbye will keep that silence in Alertmanager until there are no alerts matching it, meaning that the issue was resolved.

Annotations

annotations section allows configuring how alert annotation are displayed in the UI. Syntax:

annotations:
  default:
    hidden: bool
  hidden: list of strings
  visible: list of strings
  keep: list of strings
  strip: list of strings
  order: list of strings
  actions: list of strings
  enableInsecureHTML: bool

• default:hidden - bool, true if all annotations should be hidden by default.

• hidden - list of annotations that should be hidden by default.

• visible - list of annotations that should be visible by default when default:hidden is set to true.

• keep - list of allowed annotations, if empty all annotations are allowed.

• strip - list of ignored annotations.

• order - custom order of annotation names. All annotations listed here will appear first in the order specified here. Remaining annotations will be sorted alphabetically and appended at the end.

• actions - list of annotations that will be moved to alert dropdown menu. this only applies to annotations where value is a link.

• enableInsecureHTML - by default all annotation values are escaped when rendered in users browser, to prevent any injection attacks. If this option is set to true escaping will be disabled which allows HTML tags to be used in annotations, but if someone manages to send alerts with annotations containing untrusted HTML/Javascript code to your alertmanager instances karma will allow it to be executed in your browser.

  NOTE Enable at your own risk.

The difference between hidden/visible and keep/strip is that hidden annotations are still accessible, but they are shown in the UI collapsed by default (only name is visible, value is shown after clicking), while stripped annotations are removed entirely and never presented to the user.

Example where all annotations except summary are hidden by default. If there are additional annotation keys user will need to click on the + icon to see them. summary annotation will always appear first in the UI, followed by help and all other annotations (sorted alphabetically). Any annotation with name jira and a value that is a URL will be moved to alerts dropdown menu.

annotations:
  default:
    hidden: true
  hidden: []
  visible:
    - summary
  keep: []
  strip:
    - help
    - verylong
  order:
    - summary
    - help
  actions:
    - jira

Example where all annotations except details are visible by default. If details annotation is present on any alert user will need to click on the + icon to see it. Additionally secret annotation is stripped and never shown in the UI.

annotations:
  default:
    hidden: false
  hidden:
    - details
  visible: []
  keep: []
  strip:
    - secret

Defaults:

annotations:
  default:
    hidden: false
  hidden: []
  visible: []
  keep: []
  strip: []
  order: []
  actions: []
  enableInsecureHTML: false

Filters

filters section allows configuring default set of filters used in the UI.

Syntax:

filters:
  default: list of strings

• default - list of filters to use by default when user navigates to karma web UI. Visit /help page in karma for details on available filters. Note that if a string starts with @ YAML requires to wrap it in quotes.

Example:

filters:
  default:
    - "@state=active"
    - severity=critical

Defaults:

filters:
  default: []

Grid

grid section allows customizing how alert grid is rendered in the UI. Sorting configuration can be overridden by each user via UI settings. Syntax:

grid:
  sorting:
    order: string
    reverse: bool
    label: string
    customValues:
      labels: dict
  auto:
    ignore: list of strings
    order: list of strings
  groupLimit: integer

• sorting:order - default sort order for alert grid, valid values are:
  • disabled - no sorting, alert groups are rendered in the order they are returned by the API
  • startsAt - sort by alert timestamps, most recent alert in each group will be used when comparing each group
  • label - sort by labels, if the label used for sorting is not shared by all alerts in a group then the first alert in the group will be queried for it
• sorting:reverse - default value for reversed sort order
• sorting:label - label name for sorting when grid:sorting:order is set to label. Labels can be assigned custom values used only by sorting via sorting:customValues:labels.
• sorting:customValues:labels - when sorting using alert labels values are compared as strings, which work for labels like cluster=A, cluster=B & cluster=C, but not for cluster=prod, cluster=staging & cluster=dev. Alphabetic sort would order the second case as follows: dev, prod, staging. To allow for more natural sorting sorting:valueMapping can be used to map label values to integer values which will be used for sorting instead of original string values. Note: this option is not available via environment variables, you can only set it via the config file.
• auto:ignore - list of label names that should never be selected as multi-grid source label when multi-grid is configured to Automatic selection in the UI or when ui:multiGridLabel is set to @auto.
• auto:order - preferred order for selecting labels to be used as multi-grid source label when multi-grid is configured to Automatic selection in the UI or when ui:multiGridLabel is set to @auto. If a label name is not present in this list labels with equal weight will be picked in alphabetic order.
• groupLimit - default number of alert groups to show in the UI, loading more will require user to click on Load more button.

Defaults:

grid:
  sorting:
    order: startsAt
    reverse: true
    label: alertname
    customValues:
      labels: {}
  auto:
    ignore: []
    order: []
  groupLimit: 40

Example with sorting using severity label and value mappings for it:

grid:
  sorting:
    order: label
    reverse: false
    label: severity
    customValues:
      labels:
        severity:
          critical: 1
          warning: 2
          info: 3

Alert history

history section allows to enable and configure alert history queries. When enabled karma will use source fields to try finding remote Prometheus servers sending alerts. If source is a link that points at a reachable Prometheus server then karma will query its metrics to estimate how many times did that alert fire in the last 24h.

Syntax:

history:
  enabled: bool
  timeout: duration
  workers: integer
  rewrite:
    - source: regex
      uri: string
      proxy_url: string
      headers:
        any: string
      tls:
        ca: string
        cert: string
        key: string
        insecureSkipVerify: bool

• enabled - enable alert history UI and backend query support
• timeout - timeout for HTTP requests send to remote Prometheus servers
• workers - number of worker threads to start, each worker handles one outgoing HTTP request, more workers allows to handle more concurrent queries if you have a large number of Prometheus servers sending alerts
• rewrite - list of source rewrite rules applied before any request is send to remote Prometheus. Rewrite rules can be used to modify URI or TLS settings used by karma when connecting to Prometheus API if source field in alert uses addresses not reachable from karma. All regexes are anchored, ${N} syntax can be used for capture groups. You can rewrite uri to an empty string to disable connecting to that specific Prometheus instance.

Defaults:

history:
  enabled: true
  timeout: 20s
  workers: 30
  rewrite: []

Example with rewrite rule that will replace https://prometheus.example.com with http://localhost:9093:

history:
  rewrite:
    - source: 'https://prometheus.example.com'
      uri: 'http://localhost:9093'

Example with rewrite rule that will replace https://*.example.com with http://prometheus-*.internal (https://dev.example.com becomes http://prometheus-dev.example.com):

history:
  rewrite:
    - source: 'https://(.+).example.com'
      uri: 'http://prometheus-$1.internal'

Example with rewrite rule that will disable sending any history queries to http://prometheus.internal:

history:
  rewrite:
    - source: 'http://prometheus.internal'
      uri: ''

Example with rewrite rule that configures TLS settings without modifying URI:

history:
  rewrite:
    - source: '(.*)'
      uri: '$1'
      tls:
        insecureSkipVerify: true

Example with rewrite rule that configures a proxy without modifying URI:

history:
  rewrite:
    - source: '(.*)'
      uri: '$1'
      proxy_url: socks5://proxy.local:5000

Example with rewrite rule that will set an extra header for all history request send to Prometheus server http://prometheus.example.com:

history:
  rewrite:
    - source: 'http://prometheus.example.com'
      headers:
        X-Auth: secret
        X-Foo: bar

Karma

karma section allows configuring miscellaneous internal options.

Syntax:

karma:
  name: string

• name - name of given karma instance, this is currently used for the browser tab title.

Defaults:

karma:
  name: karma

Labels

labels section allows configuring how alert labels will be rendered in the UI. All labels will be parsed when collecting alerts from Alertmanager API and used when deduplicating alerts, but some labels aren't useful to users and so can be removed from the UI, this is controlled by keep, keep_re, strip and strip_re options. colors section allows configuring which labels should have colors applied to label background in the UI. Colors can help visually identify alerts with shared labels, for example coloring hostname label will allow to quickly spot all alerts for the same host. Syntax:

labels:
  color:
    static: list of strings
    unique: list of strings
    custom:
      foo:
        - value: string
          value_re: regex
          color: string
  order: list of strings
  keep: list of strings
  keep_re: list of regex
  strip: list of strings
  strip_re: list of regex
  valueOnly: list of strings
  valueOnly_re: list of regex

• color:static - list of label names that will all have the same color applied (different than the default label color). This allows to quickly spot a specific label that can have high range of values, but it's important when reading the dashboard. For example coloring the instance label allows to quickly learn which instance is affected by given alert.

• color:unique - list of label names that should have unique colors generated in the UI.

• color:custom - nested map of label names and value with colors - this allows to configure a set of labels with custom predefined colors applied to them rather than generated. Value is a mapping with label name -> list of dicts, each dict object allows setting:

  • value - the exact value of the label to match against
  • value_re - Go compatible regular expression to match against. All regexes will be automatically anchored.
  • color: color to apply if either value or value_re matches

  Either value or value_re is required, both can be set in which case value with be tested first. Entries are evaluated in the order they appear in the config file. Note: this option is not available via environment variables, you can only set it via the config file.

• order - custom order of label names. All labels listed here will appear first in the order specified here. Remaining labels will be sorted alphabetically and appended at the end.

• keep - list of allowed labels, if both keep and keep_re are empty all labels are allowed.

• keep_re - list of Go compatible regular expressions to keep matching labels; all regexes will be automatically anchored; if both keep and keep_re are empty all labels are allowed.

• strip - list of ignored labels.

• strip_re - list of Go compatible regular expressions to ignore matching labels; all regexes will be automatically anchored.

• valueOnly - list of label names for which only the value will be displayed in the UI.

• valueOnly_re - list of JavaScript compatible regular expressions to display only the value for matching labels; all regexes will be automatically anchored.

Example with static color for the job label (every job label will have the same color regardless of the value) and unique color for the @receiver label (every @receiver label will have color unique for each value).

labels:
  color:
    static:
      - job
    unique:
      - "@receiver"

Example where task_id label is ignored by karma:

labels:
  keep: []
  strip:
    - task_id

Example where all but instance and alertname labels are allowed:

labels:
  keep:
    - alertname
    - instance
  strip: []

Example where only labels with the prefix custom_ are allowed:

labels:
  keep: []
  keep_re:
    - 'custom_.*'

Example where severity label will have a red color for critical, yellow for warning and blue for info:

labels:
  color:
    custom:
      "@alertmanager":
        - value: prod
          color: "#e6e"
      severity:
        - value: info
          color: "#87c4e0"
        - value: warning
          color: "#ffae42"
        - value: critical
          color: "#ff220c"

Example with a regex value, info, warning and critical will get colors as below, but any value not matching those 3 values will use the color from .*:

labels:
  color:
    custom:
      severity:
        - value: info
          color: "#87c4e0"
        - value: warning
          color: "#ffae42"
        - value: critical
          color: "#ff220c"
        - value_re: ".*"
          color: "#736598"

Note: be sure to set fallback values at the end of the list, so they're only evaluated if there's no exact value match

Defaults:

labels:
  color:
    static: []
    unique: []
    custom: {}
  keep: []
  keep_re: []
  strip: []
  strip_re: []
  valueOnly: []
  valueOnly_re: []

Listen

listen section allows configuring karma web server behavior. Syntax:

listen:
  address: string
  port: integer
  timeout:
    read: duration
    write: duration
  prefix: string
  tls:
    cert: string
    key: string
  cors:
    allowedOrigins: list of strings

• address - Hostname or IP to listen on.
• port - HTTP port to listen on.
• timeout:read - HTTP server request read timeout
• timeout:write - HTTP server response write timeout
• prefix - URL root for karma, you can use to if you wish to serve it from location other than /. This option is mostly useful when using karma behind reverse proxy with other services on the same IP but different URL root.
• tls:cert - path to a TLS certificate, enables listening on HTTPS instead of HTTP,
• tls:key - path to a TLS key, required when tls.cert is set
• cors:allowedOrigins - List of origins a cross-domain request can be executed from. An empty list means all origins are allowed.

Example where karma would listen for HTTP requests on http://1.2.3.4:80/karma/

listen:
  address: 1.2.3.4
  port: 80
  prefix: /karma/

Example where karma would listen for HTTPS requests on https://1.2.3.4:443/

listen:
  address: 1.2.3.4
  port: 443
  tls:
    cert: server.pem
    key: server.key

Defaults:

listen:
  address: "0.0.0.0"
  port: 8080
  prefix: /
  tls:
    cert: ""
    key: ""
  cors:
    allowedOrigins: []

Log

log section allows configuring logging subsystem. Syntax:

log:
  config: bool
  level: string
  format: string
  requests: bool
  timestamp: bool

• config - if set to true karma will log used configuration on startup
• level - log level to set for karma, possible values are debug, info, warning, error, fatal and panic.
• format - controls how log messages are formatted, possible values are text and json. If set to json each log will be a JSON object
• requests - if set to true karma will log all requests
• timestamp - if set to true all log messages will include a timestamp

Defaults:

log:
  config: false
  level: info
  format: text
  requests: false
  timestamp: false

Silences

silences section allows specifying to configure silence post post-processing. Syntax:

silences:
  expired: duration
  comments:
    linkDetect:
      rules: list of link detection rules

• expired - controls how long expired silences are shown on active alerts. If expired is set to 5m silences expired in the last 5 minutes will be shown. Set it to zero or a negative value to disable showing expired silences.
• comments:linkDetect:rules - allows to specify a list of rules to detect links inside silence comments. It's intended to find ticket system ID strings and turn them into links. Each rule must specify:
  • regex - regular expression that matches ticket system IDs. Each regex must contain at least one capture group (regex). All regexes will be automatically anchored.
  • uriTemplate - template string that will be used to generate a link. Each template must include $1 which will be replaced with text matched by the regex.

Examples where alerts that got unsilenced will show silences expired in the last 15 minutes:

silences:
  expired: 15m

Examples where alerts that got unsilenced will not show recently expired silences:

silences:
  expired: -1m

Example where a string DEVOPS-123 inside a comment would be rendered as a link to a JIRA ticket https://jira.example.com/browse/DEVOPS-123.

silences:
  comments:
    linkDetect:
      rules:
        - regex: "(DEVOPS-[0-9]+)"
          uriTemplate: https://jira.example.com/browse/$1

Receivers

receivers section allows configuring how alerts from different receivers are handled by karma. If alerts are routed to multiple receivers they can be duplicated in the UI, each instance will have different value for @receiver. Syntax:

receivers:
  keep: list of strings
  strip: list of strings

• keep - list of receivers name that are allowed, if empty all receivers are allowed.
• strip - list of receiver names that will not be shown in the UI.

Example where alerts that are routed to the alertmanage2es receiver are ignored by karma.

receivers:
  strip:
    - alertmanage2es

Defaults:

receivers:
  strip: []

Silence form

silenceForm section allows customizing silence form behavior.

Syntax:

silenceForm:
  defaultAlertmanagers: list of strings
  strip:
    labels: list of strings

• defaultAlertmanagers - list of Alertmanager names that will be used as default when creating a new silence. If selected alertmanager is part of a cluster then the whole cluster will be used in the silence form.
• strip:labels - list of labels to ignore when populating silence form from individual alerts or group of alerts. This allows to create silences matching only unique labels, like instance or host, ignoring any common labels like job.

Example where job label won't be auto populated in the silence form.

silenceForm:
  strip:
    labels:
      - job

Example where alertmanagers prod1 and prod2 will be the default ones when creating a new silence

silenceForm:
  defaultAlertmanagers:
    - prod1
    - prod2

UI defaults

ui section allows configuring default values for UI settings controled via the configuration modal. Those defaults can be overwritten by use via UI controls.

Syntax:

ui:
  refresh: duration
  hideFiltersWhenIdle: bool
  colorTitlebar: bool
  theme: string
  animations: bool
  minimalGroupWidth: integer
  alertsPerGroup: integer
  collapseGroups: string
  multiGridLabel: string
  multiGridSortReverse: bool

• refresh - default refresh interval, this tells the UI how often karma API should be queried

• hideFiltersWhenIdle - if enabled filter bar will be hidden after some user inactivity

• colorTitlebar - if enabled alert group title bar color will be set to follow alerts in that group

• theme - default theme, possible values:

  • light - bright theme
  • dark - dark theme
  • auto - follows browser preferences using prefers-color-scheme media queries

  Default value is auto.

• animations - enables UI animations

• minimalGroupWidth - minimal width (in pixels) for each alert group rendered on the grid. This value is used to calculate the number of columns rendered on the grid.

• alertsPerGroup - default number of alerts to show for each group

• collapseGroups - controls if alert groups will default to being rendered expanded or collapsed (only title bar is visible). Valid values:

  • expanded - groups are always expanded
  • collapsed - groups are always collapsed
  • collapsedOnMobile - groups are expanded on desktop and collapsed on mobile browsers

• multiGridLabel - when set to a label name it enables multi-grid support. With multi-grid karma will have a dedicated grid for each value of this label, all alerts sharing that value will be placed on the same grid. There will be extra grid for alerts without that label. Grid sorting options will be used to sort the list of grids. This option accepts additional special values:

  • @auto - grid label will be selected automatically
  • @alertmanager - one grid per alertmanager configured in karma config
  • @cluster - one grid per alertmanager cluster
  • @receiver - one grid per alertmanager receiver

• multiGridSortReverse - when multi-grid is enabled set to true the order in which grids are displayed.

Defaults:

ui:
  refresh: 30s
  hideFiltersWhenIdle: true
  colorTitlebar: false
  theme: "auto"
  animations: true
  minimalGroupWidth: 420
  alertsPerGroup: 5
  collapseGroups: collapsedOnMobile
  multiGridLabel: ""
  multiGridSortReverse: false

Customizing karma

In order to keep the core code simple karma doesn't support any way of extending provided functionality. There is however possibility to inject custom CSS & JavaScript code, which can be used to either override built in CSS styles or integrate with extra services.

custom:
  css: string
  js: string

• css - path to a CSS file
• js - path to JavaScript file

Example:

custom:
  css: /theme/custom.css
  js: /assets/custom.js

Use at your own risk and be aware that used CSS class names might change without warning. This feature is provided as is without any guarantees.

Command line flags

Config file options are mapped to command line flags, so alertmanager:interval config file key is accessible as --alertmanager.interval flag, run karma --help to see a full list. Exceptions for passing flags:

• jira - this option is a list of maps and it's only available when using config file.

There's no support for configuring multiple Alertmanager servers using flags, but it's possible to configure a single Alertmanager instance this way, see the Simplified Configuration section.

Environment variables

Environment variables are mapped in a similar way as command line flags, alertmanager:interval is accessible as ALERTMANAGER_INTERVAL env. Exceptions for passing flags:

• HOST - used by gin webserver, same effect as setting listen:address config option
• PORT - used by gin webserver, same effect as setting listen:port config option

There's no support for configuring multiple alertmanager servers using environment variables, but it's possible to configure a single Alertmanager instance this way, see the Simplified Configuration section.

Simplified Configuration

To configure multiple Alertmanager instances karma requires a config file, but for a single Alertmanager instance cases it's possible to configure all Alertmanager server options that are set for alertmanager.servers config section using only flags or environment variables.

Alertmanager URI

To set the uri key from alertmanager.servers map ALERTMANAGER_URI env or --alertmanager.uri flag can be used. Examples:

ALERTMANAGER_URI=https://alertmanager.example.com karma
karma --alertmanager.uri https://alertmanager.example.com

Alertmanager external URI

To set the external_uri key from alertmanager.servers map ALERTMANAGER_EXTERNAL_URI env or --alertmanager.external_uri flag can be used. Examples:

ALERTMANAGER_EXTERNAL_URI=https://alertmanager.example.com karma
karma --alertmanager.external_uri https://alertmanager.example.com

Alertmanager name

To set the name key from alertmanager.servers map ALERTMANAGER_NAME env or --alertmanager.name flag can be used. Examples:

ALERTMANAGER_NAME=single karma
karma --alertmanager.name single

Alertmanager timeout

To set the timeout key from alertmanager.servers map ALERTMANAGER_TIMEOUT env or --alertmanager.timeout flag can be used. Examples:

ALERTMANAGER_TIMEOUT=10s karma
karma --alertmanager.timeout 10s

Alertmanager request proxy

To set the proxy key from alertmanager.servers map ALERTMANAGER_PROXY env or --alertmanager.proxy flag can be used. Examples:

ALERTMANAGER_PROXY=true karma
karma --alertmanager.proxy