From Free IPA

Configuration files

The server and client share a common core configuration file, /etc/ipa/default.conf. This file is read by the server at startup and the ipa command every time it is executed.

The section [global] is mandatory and the only section used. A sample default configuration file is:

[global]
basedn=dc=example,dc=com
realm=EXAMPLE.COM
domain=example.com
xmlrpc_uri=https://ipa.example.com/ipa/xml
ldap_uri=ldapi://%2fvar%2frun%2fslapd-EXAMPLE-COM.socket
enable_ra=True

These values are shared between the client and server (on the same machine). If you need to make client or server-specific configuration changes you can create a configuration file for it. For the server used /etc/ipa/server.conf and for client configuration used /etc/ipa/cli.conf

For example, if you want to enable debug logging for the server only, create /etc/ipa/server.conf containing:

[global]
debug=True

To always have verbose mode set on the client, create /etc/ipa/cli.conf that contains:

[global]
verbose=True

Merging

The order that file configuration files are read is:

1. context file (/etc/ipa/server.conf or /etc/ipa/cli.conf)
2. default file (/etc/ipa/default.conf)

Once an attribute is set it is not overridden if it appears in another configuration file.

For example, if you set debug=True in server.conf and debug=False in default.conf then it will be True because the value in default.conf will be ignored.