kabactl is configured mainly through config.toml. The variables here cover things that are per-process, secret, or only useful when tuning. When kabactl runs under systemd or in a container, set them in the unit or the container environment.
| Variable | Effect |
|---|
KABA_ALLOW_ROOT=1 | Allow running as root. |
KABA_DEBUG=1 | More network logging from server, at the level set by iroh_log_level. |
KABA_TRACE=1 | Same as --trace. Inherited by the service daemon. |
KABA_TRACE_INTERVAL_SECS | Sampling interval for --trace. |
KABA_TRACE_HEAP_PROF=1 | Also activate heap profiling under --trace (Linux). |
KABA_STOP_GRACE_SECS | How long service stop waits before forcing the process down. |
KABA_SHUTDOWN_GRACE_SECS | How long the process waits for background work at exit. Default 8. |
| Variable | Effect |
|---|
KABA_UPDATE_TOKEN | Access token for self-update against a private repository. Sent as an Authorization header. |
KABA_UPDATE_BASE_URL | Release host for self-update. |
HF_TOKEN | Hugging Face token for private or gated repositories. |
KABA_GEMMA_MIRROR | Mirror tried first for base-model downloads. |
KABA_GEMMA_HF_ORG, KABA_GEMMA_HF_URL_E2B, KABA_GEMMA_HF_URL_E4B, KABA_GEMMA_HF_URL_E2B_MMPROJ, KABA_GEMMA_HF_URL_E4B_MMPROJ | Override where each model file is fetched from. |
KABA_VOICE_MIRROR | Mirror for the voice bundle. |
KABA_VOICE_AUTOPROVISION=1 / 0 | Force automatic voice-model download at start on or off. |
| Variable | Effect |
|---|
KABA_WORKSPACE_PASSWORD | Password for --workspace, so ask and train do not prompt. Prefer the prompt on shared machines. |
| Variable | Effect |
|---|
KABA_BACKEND | Overrides --device: auto, cuda, rocm, wgpu, cpu. |
KABA_LLAMA_GPU_LAYERS | Caps the layers placed on the GPU, whatever a request asks for. |
KABA_LLAMA_MAX_CTX | Upper bound on the context window. |
KABA_LLAMA_THREADS | CPU threads. |
KABA_QUANTIZE | Default quantization. |
KABA_MODEL_IDLE_SECS | Unload the model after this long idle. |
KABA_SESSION_SLOTS=0 | Turn off per-session context reuse. |
KABA_VISION_MODEL=base | Use the base model’s multimodal projector for images instead of the dedicated route. |
KABA_VOICE_IDLE_UNLOAD | Unload voice models after this many seconds idle. |
| Variable | Limits |
|---|
KABA_INFER_STALL_SECS | How long generation may go without producing a token. |
KABA_INFER_MAX_SECS | Total time for one generation. |
KABA_ASK_TIMEOUT_SECS | Deadline for an ask sent to a peer. |
KABA_TRAIN_STALL_SECS | How long training may go without progress. |
| Variable | Effect |
|---|
KABACTL_LANCE_INDEX_CACHE_MB | Vector index cache per store. Default 256, or 32 on relay-only nodes. |
KABACTL_LANCE_META_CACHE_MB | Vector metadata cache per store. Default 128, or 16 on relay-only nodes. |
KABA_VECTOR_MAINTENANCE=0 | Turn off background compaction of the vector store. |
KABA_MEMGUARD | Controls the memory governor, which frees caches under pressure. |
_RJEM_MALLOC_CONF | Allocator settings (Linux), for example narenas:N. |
| Variable | Effect |
|---|
KABA_SANDBOX_RUNTIME | Force the OCI runtime for the sandbox, for example crun or runc. Must be on PATH. |
KABA_PASS_BIN | Path to the pass executable for the vault backend. |
KABA_OP_BIN | Path to the 1Password op executable. |
KABA_TESSDATA | Directory of Tesseract language data for OCR. |
KABA_ESPEAK_BIN | Path to espeak-ng for spoken replies. |
KABA_FEDERATION_SEEDS | Seed nodes for the public-services directory. |
KABA_TOOLLOOP_JS | Path to an alternative tool-loop script. For development. |
kabactl reads many more variables that adjust internals of generation, context management and memory pressure. They are intended for diagnosing a specific problem with guidance, and their defaults are chosen per machine.
- Generation:
KABA_LLAMA_UBATCH, KABA_LLAMA_SEED, KABA_LLAMA_KV_REUSE, KABA_LLAMA_CTX_HEADROOM, KABA_LLAMA_MOE_CPU, KABA_PREFILL_CHUNK, KABA_KV_BUCKET, KABA_FAST_LANE_MAX_TOKENS, KABA_SSE_COALESCE_MS
- Constrained output:
KABA_JSON_GRAMMAR, KABA_CONSTRAINED, KABA_CONSTRAINT, KABA_GRAMMAR_FASTPATH
- Watchdogs:
KABA_INFER_FIRST_TOKEN_SECS, KABA_INFER_HANG_SECS, KABA_INFER_WEDGE_GRACE_SECS, KABA_DECODE_DEADLINE_SECS
- Context spill:
KABA_SPILL_PERSIST, KABA_SPILL_SUMMARIZE, and related KABA_SPILL_*
- Memory governor:
KABA_MEMGUARD_TICK_SECS, KABA_MEMGUARD_MIN_AVAIL_MIB, KABA_MEMGUARD_RSS_TARGET_MIB, KABA_MEMGUARD_VRAM_PCT, KABA_MEMGUARD_PSI
- Sessions:
KABA_SESSION_SLOTS_MAX, KABA_SESSION_SLOT_IDLE_SECS
- Training:
KABA_TRAIN_MAX_SAMPLES, KABA_GRAD_CHECKPOINT, KABA_SUMMARISE_BATCH, KABA_SUMMARISE_PARALLEL
- GPU:
KABA_GPU_DEVICE, KABA_VRAM_DEVICE, KABA_WHISPER_GPU, KABA_NEUTTS_GPU_LAYERS
- Timing output:
KABA_PERF, KABA_GEN_TIMING, KABA_LAYER_TIMING
[todo: document defaults and accepted values for the advanced tuning variables.]
