Question

I have a file (myenv.sh) with the following content

export MYVAR="HELLO"

And then I have my program (myhugeprogram.py):

#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
print os.environ['MYVAR']

Which is executable: chmod 755 myhugeprogram.py

Now I source my environment: source myenv.sh

And run my program:

./myhugeprogram.py
HELLO

As expected. Now I run it non-interactively via SSH:

user1@host1:~$ ssh user2@host2 ./myhugeprogram.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./myhugeprogram.py", line 3, in <module>
    print os.environ['MYVAR']
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/UserDict.py", line 22, in __getitem__
    raise KeyError(key)
KeyError: 'MYVAR'

Which is normal, because I have not sourced myenv.sh. Now the question:

How do I source a Bash file which sets some environment variables before executing my Python script when running non-interactivaly via SSH?

Answer 1

Two ways I can think of:

• include the source command in the ssh command you run, for example

  ssh user2@host2 "source myenv.sh; ./myhugeprogram.py"
  

• set the environment variable in your .bashrc file.