Configuration

BetweenRows is configured entirely via environment variables. There is no config file.

Required on first boot

Variable	Default	Description
BR_ADMIN_PASSWORD	—	Password for the initial admin account. Required when no users exist in the admin database. Only used on first boot. Change it through the admin UI after logging in.

Admin account

Variable	Default	Description
BR_ADMIN_USER	admin	Username for the initial admin account. Only used on first boot — ignored on subsequent boots. The username cannot be changed after creation; pick the name you want before the first run. You can always create additional admin accounts later via the UI or CLI.

Secrets and signing

Variable	Default	Description
BR_ENCRYPTION_KEY	auto-persisted	64-char hex string. AES-256-GCM key used to encrypt sensitive admin data at rest (data source passwords, decision function JS source). If unset, auto-generated on first boot and persisted to /data/.betweenrows/encryption_key. Set explicitly in production. If you rotate this value, existing encrypted data becomes unreadable — migrate carefully.
BR_ADMIN_JWT_SECRET	auto-persisted	HMAC-SHA256 signing secret for admin JWTs. Any non-empty string. Auto-generated and persisted to /data/.betweenrows/jwt_secret if unset. Set explicitly in production. Rotating this value invalidates all existing admin sessions — admins must re-authenticate.
BR_ADMIN_JWT_EXPIRY_HOURS	24	JWT lifetime in hours. After this duration, admins must re-authenticate.

Admin database

Variable	Default	Description
BR_ADMIN_DATABASE_URL	sqlite://proxy_admin.db?mode=rwc	SeaORM connection URL for the admin database. SQLite is the supported and tested backend. The file lives under /data in the Docker image.

Network bindings

Variable	Default (binary)	Default (Docker)	Description
BR_PROXY_BIND_ADDR	127.0.0.1:5434	0.0.0.0:5434	The address the SQL proxy listens on. Docker image defaults to 0.0.0.0 so the port is reachable from outside the container.
BR_ADMIN_BIND_ADDR	127.0.0.1:5435	0.0.0.0:5435	The address the admin REST API and UI listens on. Same Docker override.

Connection lifecycle

Variable	Default	Description
BR_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECS	900 (15 min)	Close idle proxy connections after this many seconds with no activity. Prevents slow or abandoned clients from holding connections indefinitely. Set to 0 to disable (not recommended — risks connection exhaustion under load).

CORS

Variable	Default	Description
BR_CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS	(empty — same-origin only)	Comma-separated list of allowed CORS origins for the admin REST API. Required if you host the admin UI on a different origin than the REST API. Example: https://admin.example.com,https://staging-admin.example.com.

Logging

Variable	Default	Description
RUST_LOG	info	Standard Rust tracing filter. Examples: debug, info,hyper=warn, proxy=debug,info. Use debug when investigating an issue, info for normal operation.

Example: minimum production configuration

docker run -d \
  --name betweenrows \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -e BR_ADMIN_PASSWORD="$(openssl rand -base64 24)" \
  -e BR_ENCRYPTION_KEY="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" \
  -e BR_ADMIN_JWT_SECRET="$(openssl rand -base64 32)" \
  -e BR_ADMIN_JWT_EXPIRY_HOURS=8 \
  -e BR_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECS=600 \
  -e RUST_LOG=info \
  -p 5434:5434 -p 5435:5435 \
  -v /srv/betweenrows/data:/data \
  ghcr.io/getbetweenrows/betweenrows:0.16.2

TIP

Save BR_ENCRYPTION_KEY and BR_ADMIN_JWT_SECRET in a secrets manager (Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Fly secrets, Kubernetes secrets). Losing them means losing encrypted data source credentials and invalidating all admin sessions.

Related pages

• Install with Docker — the typical deployment path
• Install on Fly.io — for hosted deployments
• Backups — what to snapshot
• Security Overview — the production checklist