Environment Variables

Environment Variables

In Finit v4.3 support for setting environment variables in finit.conf, and any *.conf, was added. It is worth noting that these are global and shared with all services -- the only way to have a service-local environment is detailed in Services Environment.

Global environment variables go in an environment block, env for short:

environment {
    foo = "bar"
    baz = "qux"
}

On reload of .conf files, all tracked environment variables are cleared so if foo is removed from finit.conf, or any finit.d/*.conf file, it will no longer be used by Finit or any new (!) started run/tasks or services. The environment of already started processes can not be changed.

The only variables reset to sane defaults on .conf reload are:

PATH=_PATH_STDPATH
SHELL=_PATH_BSHELL
LOGNAME=root
USER=root

It is entirely possible to override these as well from the .conf files, but be careful. Changing SHELL changes the behavior of system() and a lot of other commands as well.