If any of your options contains the expression `$__<provider>{<argument>}`
or `${<environment variable>}`, then they will be processed by Grafana's
variable expander. The expander runs the provider with the provided argument
to get the final value of the option.
There are two providers: `env` and `file`.
### Env provider
The `env` provider can be used to expand an environment variable. If you
set an option to `$__env{PORT}` the `PORT` environment variable will be
used in its place. For environment variables you can also use the
short-hand syntax `${PORT}`.
Grafana's log directory would be set to the `grafana` directory in the
directory behind the `LOGDIR` environment variable in the following
example.
```
[paths]
logs = $__env{LOGDIR}/grafana
```
### File provider
`file` reads a file from the filesystem. It trims whitespace from the
beginning and the end of files.
The database password in the following example would be replaced by
the content of the `/etc/secrets/gf_sql_password` file:
```
[database]
password = $__file{/etc/secrets/gf_sql_password}
```
> For any changes to `conf/grafana.ini` (or corresponding environment variables) to take effect, you must restart Grafana for the changes to take effect.