The Mesos master and slave can take a variety of configuration options through command-line arguments, environment variables, or a config file. A list of the available options can be seen by running @mesos-master --help@ or @mesos-slave --help@. Each option can be set in three ways:
* By passing it to the binary using @--option_name=value@.
* By setting the environment variable @MESOS_OPTION_NAME@ (the option name with a @MESOS_@ prefix added to it).
* By adding a line in the @mesos.conf@ file located in @MESOS_HOME/conf@, where @MESOS_HOME@ is the directory in which Mesos is located.

Configuration values are searched for first on the command line, then in the environment, and then in the config file.

In addition, it is possible to tell the binaries to use a different configuration directory from the default, in order to run multiple Mesos configurations from the same install directories. This is done by passing the @--conf=DIR@ option to the binary. The directory passed should contain a file called @mesos.conf@. A config directory is used instead of passing a file directly because, in the future, there may be multiple config files in the same directory (e.g. a separate one for the allocation module).

h1. Common Options

The following list may not match the version of mesos you are running, as the configuration flags evolve from time to time in the code. 

<div style="font-size:1.5em"><b>The definitive source for which flags your version of Mesos supports can be found by running the binary with the flag <code>--help</code>, for example <code>bin/mesos-master --help</code>.</b></div>

The following options are commonly configured for both the master and slave:

|_. Parameter         |_. Description|
|@webui_port@     | Port to bind to for user-viewable web UI. |
|@log_dir@             | Directory to place logs into, including "event history":Event-history.md logs. It is recommended to use a local disk for each node. |
|@quiet@                | Disable logging to standard error. |
|@conf@                | Specifies a config directory to use instead of the default one. |

The following options are commonly configured for the slave:

|_. Parameter         |_. Description|
|@master@                     | Master URL to connect to. |
|@resources@                 | A semicolon separated set of _key:value_ pairs, e.g. <code>cpus:1;mem:1024</code> |
|@work_dir@         | Directory for slaves to place framework's output files in. It is recommended to use a local disk for each slave. |
|@isolation@            | Isolation module to use for isolating tasks. The default is @process@, which performs no isolation other than running each framework as its user, but @lxc@ can be used on systems that support Linux Containers. See "using Linux containers":Using-Linux-Containers.textile for details. |
|@hadoop_home@ | Location of Hadoop, if you wish to use the Hadoop Distributed File System for distributing framework binaries across the cluster. |

The following options are commonly configured for the master:

|_. Parameter         |_. Description|
|@url@                     | A ZooKeeper URL can be specified when "using ZooKeeper":Using-ZooKeeper.textile. |
|@port@                 | Port to bind to for communication between master and slaves. |
|@allocator@           | Which pluggable "allocation module":Allocation-module.textile to use. Currently there is only one, @simple@, that performs fair sharing between frameworks. |
|@ip@                      | Which IP address to bind to (to make the master bind to a desired network interface if it does not do so by default). |