For its main configuration, WebMapReduce uses a scheme similar to Hadoop's: default settings are stored in a file named wmr-default.xml with site-specific changes in wmr-site.xml. Both of these files are usually stored in the $WMR_HOME/conf directory, and they have the exact same format and features as Hadoop's configuration files.

To begin, set a password for the submission database using the property wmr.db.password in the file wmr-site.xml (if one is not present, copy/rename wmr-site.xml.example). Place the following stanza inside the root <configuration> element:

<property>
  <name>wmr.db.password</name>
  <value>password</value>
</property>

Next, optionally set the hostname and port to which the server should bind if the defaults will not work for you (localhost and 50100, respectively):

<property>
  <name>wmr.server.bind.host</name>
  <value>hostname-or-ip</value>
</property>

<property>
  <name>wmr.server.bind.port</name>
  <value>port</value>
</property>

Those settings should be enough for a first run of WMRServer. Other settings that might be of interest at this point are wmr.dfs.home and wmr.temp.dir. Look at wmr-default.xml for a full list of possible settings and their descriptions (some of these will be covered in later sections).