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This is my /etc/environment:

HELLO="hello"

Now I check that the environment is being set when connecting via ssh:

ssh foobar@my_host env

And this is the output:

SHELL=/bin/bash
SSH_CLIENT=foobar 46460 56723
USER=foobar
MAIL=/var/mail/foobar
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
PWD=/home/foobar
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SHLVL=1
HOME=/home/foobar
LOGNAME=foobar
SSH_CONNECTION=foobar 46460 foobar 56723
_=/usr/bin/env

So: why is HELLO not being set? Is /etc/environment being parsed at all in Ubuntu? What is the recommended way to set system wide environment variables in Ubuntu?

And as bonus, it would be great if those system wide environment variables work when doing:

  • ssh (non-interactive commands)
  • ssh (interactive commands)
  • cron jobs
  • interactive login shells
  • and what-not

I mean, when I am thinking about system-wide environment variables, I really mean it!

I do not need a different method for each possible way I have to get into my machine: I just need one method, which works for all users, all commands, all login mechanisms: what could be simply described as a "system-wide setting".

Sorry for the ironic mode, but I have just been losing (again) some time with this issue.

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1 Answer

up vote 0 down vote accepted

Make sure you have pam_env.so added as a session module in /etc/pam.d/common-session. See also the manual of pam_env. Also make sure SSH uses PAM (UsePAM=yes in /etc/ssh/sshd_config).

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I have added the line session required pam_env.so to /etc/pam.d/common-session, and verified that my ssh server is using PAM (UsePAM yes). It is still not working. I have even restarted the SSH server, but I had no luck. Any idea? – gonvaled Sep 5 '11 at 15:04
I think I got bitten badly by a quirk in my own setup: I am using ssh connection sharing, and of course no authentication is performed as long as an open connection is still there. So I had to kill all opened connections to the remote host, and reconnect from scratch. Now /etc/environment is being read as expected. – gonvaled Sep 5 '11 at 15:47
@gonvaled: Theoretically, the PAM session stack could be ran for every new session -- it usually doesn't depend on the auth stack in any way. It's just that OpenSSH devs chose to open a single PAM session per connection. – grawity Sep 5 '11 at 16:54

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