Have upstart read environment from /etc/environment for a service

Question

What is the best way to provide the environment variables defined in /etc/environment to an upstart service?

I think simply sourcing them with . in a script section does not work, because the scripts are executed by sh which would need an additional export in front of every definition...

score 16 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 26 '15 at 20:51

16

I finally got an answer on the #upstart IRC channel. At some point, upstart will get proper PAM support and thus read /etc/environment itself. Until then, the trick is to execute the command with su. su uses PAM and will set up the proper environment. Example:

script 
    exec su root -c /usr/sbin/job_needing_envs
end script

edited Aug 26 '15 at 20:51

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answered Apr 05 '10 at 13:43

Nikratio

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Thank you for posting the answer, you've helped me in exactly the same issue. – Maxim Veksler Dec 20 '10 at 09:44
error: `su: must be run from a terminal` – Kuf Sep 01 '17 at 07:47

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 26 '15 at 19:52

3

I tend to use eval $(cat /etc/environment | sed 's/^/export /')

It takes each line in /etc/environment, prepends export, and evaluates it:

script
exec /bin/bash <<'EOT'
  eval $(cat /etc/environment | sed 's/^/export /')
  do_what_you_need_to
EOT
end script

answered Aug 26 '15 at 19:52

Jrgns

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Why do you use exec and not just put the export directly in the script block? – Guss Oct 15 '15 at 14:58

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 01 '10 at 22:11

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Add this to your script:

. /etc/environment
export VAR1 VAR2 VAR3

where the variables you need are specified in place of the "VAR1" style placeholders.

answered Apr 01 '10 at 22:11

Dennis Williamson

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That way I have to manually keep the upstart configuration and /etc/environment in sync, which is (in my opinion) not any better than defining the variables twice... – Nikratio Apr 02 '10 at 16:17
I wouldn't use `/etc/environment` to define all your needed variables. Leave that as a static file. On my system, I could only find a few scripts that use it anyway. Create a file called something like `/etc/environment.local` and put your variables *and* exports in there and source *that* file. Then you only have to maintain that *one* file. – Dennis Williamson Apr 02 '10 at 17:03
/etc/environment is read by pam_env.so (and not by any scripts), so it is available for any login. Only programs started by upstart don't have access to that file by defaulht, unfortunately. – Nikratio Apr 05 '10 at 13:23

Have upstart read environment from /etc/environment for a service

3 Answers3