AWS ECS environment variable not available [Python]

Question

I am using AWS ECS with a Python Framework and in my task definition i have the option to add environment variables that will be available to the service(cluster).

Here is where i added the env variables:

When i then try to print all the env variables in my service i do not get access to these variables and i am not sure why. Here i printed all my env using environ:

for a in os.environ:
    print('Var: ', a, 'Value: ', os.getenv(a))
print("all done")

Result:

DB_PORT or APP_KEY is not available in my service or python-code.

Answer 1

I had a similar problem and it seems to me that the full environment is passed only to the PID 1 (init process, which in a container should be CMD/ENTRYPOINT command). Cron is not that process so you cannot assume it sees the same environment.

What I did may not be the best solution, it is rather a hack, but it works.

The environment of a process is available in /proc/<pid>/environ, so in this case /proc/1/environ. I grab it from there and I store it in a file for a future use:

for I in `cat /proc/1/environ  | strings`; do echo "export $I"; done > /src/.profile

and then I just source /src/.profile in my scripts (the cron job in your case).

If you need AWS credentials, you may also need access to ECS_CONTAINER_METADATA_URI_V4 environment variable and that one will be also there.