Working with FME Flow Container Environment Variables

To perform additional configuration of an FME Flow deployment with Docker Compose, define an environment variable section under the relevant container service. Each service has a different set of environment variables that can be defined.

FME Flow Web Services Container

FME Engine Container

FME Flow Core Container

NGINX Container

Changing the Database Connection

Initializing the PostgreSQL Database

When a new stack is launched, a mode of the core container populates an empty PostgreSQL database with the FME Flow database schema before starting FME Flow. If you want to use an existing PostgreSQL database for your FME Flow, you must configure an initialization container using the following environment variables.

For example, the following command populates the schema in an existing PostgreSQL database running on host my-psgql-hostname, and then exits.

docker run -e PGSQLHOSTNAME=my-pgsql-hostname -e PGSQLPORT=5432 -e PGSQLADMINUSER=postgres -e PGSQLADMINPASSWORD=postgres -e PRIMARY_PROCESS=initpgsql safesoftware/fmeflow-core:2024-latest

Environment Variable	Default Value	Description
PGSQLHOSTNAME	fmeflowdb	The host name of the PostgreSQL database that is to be initialized.
PGSQLPORT	5432	The port to connect to the PostgreSQL database.
PGSQLADMINUSER	postgres	A user that exists on the PostgreSQL database that has permissions to create a database.
PGSQLADMINPASSWORD		The password for the PGSQLADMINUSER.
PGSQLADMINDATABASE	Same value as PGSQLADMINUSER	Set this to the database to which to connect initially as the PGSQLADMINUSER to initialize the database schema on the fmeflowdbinit service.
PGSQLUSERNAME	fmeflow	The user to create as part of the FME Flow schema that FME Flow will use to connect to the database.
PRIMARY_PROCESS		Set to initpgsql.
AZUREPOSTGRESQL	false	Set to true on the fmeflowdbinit service in the Docker Compose file when using an Azure database for PostgreSQL to ensure the connection string is formatted correctly.

Running the Containers as a Different User

By default, the FME Flow containers run as a user named fmeflow in group fmeflow, with UID and GID 1363. You may want the UID and GID of the user in the container to match a user defined on the host machine. For example, you may want to use a host bind mount for the FME Flow System Share volume instead of using Docker volumes. If mounting a host directory into the container, it is optimal if the permissions in that folder match a real user on the host.

To match the user and group running a container with a user defined on the host machine, pass in variables FMEFLOW_UID and FMEFLOW_GID, set to the UID and GID of the user and group ID you want to use, respectively. Additionally, you must run the containers as the root user so that the container init can set the right permissions on the files. This is done in a Docker run command with the --user=0 flag, and in Compose with the attribute user: 0 to run as root.

Running Containers in the Local Time Zone

By default, FME Flow containers run in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). To adjust to the local time zone of the container hosts, mount time zone files to the fmeflowweb, fmeflowcore, fmeflowqueue, and fmeflowengine containers, as follows:

volumes:

- "/etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro"

- "/etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro"

Alternatively, set the TZ environment variable for each container, as follows:

TZ=<timezone>

where <timezone> is a valid country code. For a list of country codes, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones.