[[configuration-general-options]] == Specify general settings You can specify settings in the +{beatname_lc}.yml+ config file to control the general behavior of {beatname_uc}. This includes: * <> that control things like publisher behavior and the location of some files. * <> that are supported by all Elastic Beats. [float] [[configuration-global-options]] === Global Filebeat configuration options These options are in the `filebeat` namespace. [float] ==== `registry_file` The name of the registry file. If a relative path is used, it is considered relative to the data path. See the <> section for details. The default is `${path.data}/registry`. [source,yaml] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- filebeat.registry_file: registry ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is not possible to use a symlink as registry file. NOTE: The registry file is only updated when new events are flushed and not on a predefined period. That means in case there are some states where the TTL expired, these are only removed when new event are processed. [float] ==== `config_dir` The full path to the directory that contains additional prospector configuration files. Each configuration file must end with `.yml`. Each config file must also specify the full Filebeat config hierarchy even though only the prospector part of the file is processed. All global options, such as `registry_file`, are ignored. The `config_dir` option MUST point to a directory other than the directory where the main Filebeat config file resides. If the specified path is not absolute, it is considered relative to the configuration path. See the <> section for details. [source,yaml] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- filebeat.config_dir: path/to/configs ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [float] [[shutdown-timeout]] ==== `shutdown_timeout` How long Filebeat waits on shutdown for the publisher to finish sending events before Filebeat shuts down. By default, this option is disabled, and Filebeat does not wait for the publisher to finish sending events before shutting down. This means that any events sent to the output, but not acknowledged before Filebeat shuts down, are sent again when you restart Filebeat. For more details about how this works, see <>. You can configure the `shutdown_timeout` option to specify the maximum amount of time that Filebeat waits for the publisher to finish sending events before shutting down. If all events are acknowledged before `shutdown_timeout` is reached, Filebeat will shut down. There is no recommended setting for this option because determining the correct value for `shutdown_timeout` depends heavily on the environment in which Filebeat is running and the current state of the output. Example configuration: [source,yaml] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- filebeat.shutdown_timeout: 5s ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- include::../../libbeat/docs/generalconfig.asciidoc[]