AWS Elastic Beanstalk: Running Cron.d script, missing Environment Variables

Question

I'm trying to run a PHP script that is triggered by a cron script (in cron.d). The script is triggered properly but it is missing the Elastic Beanstalk "Environment Variables" that are stored in the $_SERVER superglobal. The script is being run as the user "root" for now, but it's not in the same environment that has the environment variables. The variables are set correctly, if I run the script from a full shell it runs just fine.

Where are the "exports" for these variables? Where do they get set? I found the SetEnvs for Apache in /etc/apache/conf.d/aws_env.conf. I can't find anything in the user's .bashrc, .bash_profile, etc. Is there a workaround? A better way to do this?

Thanks.

Answer 1

While searching for solutions to the same problem I ran into this blog post: http://sebgoo.blogspot.nl/2013/10/elastic-beanstalk-cron-command-and-rds.html. To summarize, you can load the Elastic Beanstalk environment variables using the opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars file:

0 3 * * * . /opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars; some_command

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

I just found this, using

grep -r "export MY_VAR" /

EDIT: Amazon seems to move the file location from time to time. Current location is:

/opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars

So I think I'll just include (source [file path]) that in my script before calling my php script. Still seems like a funky way to do things. I'm still in for better solutions.

I was running PHP via bash script triggered by cron. So to setup the environment, I would do something like this:

#!/bin/bash 
source /opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars
php -f my-script.php

See @userid53's answer below for PHP solution.

Answer 3

I spent several hours trying to figure out how to pass Environment Variables to PHP CLI. I tried:

• setting in ebextensions config: $ source /opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars.d/sysenv
• setting all my Environment variables to config file.

No matter what I tried, env variables won't pass to PHP CLI.

When I log to my EC2 instance as ec2-user and do this: $ echo $ENVIRONMENT I get prod. If I do it as $ sudo su and then $ echo $ENVIRONMENT I get prod.

If I manually run the PHP CLI file (used in cronjob) my script works. When it runs automatically (via cronjob) Environment Variables are not passed to my script.

Here's what I did. Put this in your cronjob entry script:

$variables = '/opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars.d/sysenv';

if (file_exists($variables) && is_file($variables)) {
    $contents = file_get_contents($variables);
    foreach(explode("\n", $contents) as $line) {
        if (empty($line)) continue;

        $new_line = str_replace('export ', '', $line);
        $first_part = strpos($new_line, '=');

        $last_part = substr($new_line, $first_part, strlen($new_line));
        $variable_value = str_replace(array('=', '"'), array('',''), $last_part);

        $variable_name = substr($new_line, 0, $first_part);
        putenv($variable_name."=".$variable_value);
    }
}

It extracts each line from /opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars.d/sysenv file, removes the export part, gets the variable name & value, and sets it via putenv() function.

Answer 4

It's works for me with a Laravel Project

* * * * * root . /opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars && /usr/bin/php /var/www/html/artisan schedule:run 1>> /dev/null 2>&1

For a non Laravel Project you can test that:

* * * * * root . /opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars && /usr/bin/php /path/to/your/script.php 1>> /dev/null 2>&1

Hope this helps!

Answer 5

in version 3.0.3 it has changed again, use this to export your envars in command line

file="/opt/elasticbeanstalk/deployment/env"
        while IFS=: read -r f1
        do
            export $f1
        done <"$file"

Answer 6

I know this is an old thread but I recently needed to do something similar in a Node.js environment deployed on Elastic Beanstalk; for what I could tell, the file /opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars is not present on Node.js environments. I ended up writing a Python script that loaded the environment variables from /opt/elasticbeanstalk/bin/get-config, and then executing my Node.js script from there.

The code I ended up using was:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import os
import subprocess
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE, call
import simplejson as json

envData = json.loads(Popen(['/opt/elasticbeanstalk/bin/get-config', 'environment'], stdout = PIPE).communicate()[0])

for k, v in envData.iteritems():
    os.environ[k] = v

call(["babel-node", "/var/app/current/<script_name>.js"])

Hope this helps anyone needing to do the same.

For the complete configuration I deployed, you can refer to my original post How to set environment variables in Amazon Elastic Beanstalk when running a cron job (Node.js)

Answer 7

I added the following line to my shell script:

source /opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars .bash_profile

So my script, which is executed by the crontab, looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
source /opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars .bash_profile


# do some php stuff

Answer 8

In case you need something similar for CodeIgniter:

* * * * * root . /opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars && /usr/bin/php /var/www/html/index.php controller method

Example:

* * * * * root . /opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars && /usr/bin/php /var/www/html/index.php tasks pushNotification

A more descriptive alternative:

* * * * * root source /opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars && /usr/bin/php /var/www/html/index.php tasks pushNotification

Answer 9

AWS and EBS are changing the location of the env vars from time to time. At the current time, I was able to retrieve the env vars from the following path (I've python EBS)

/opt/python/current/env

Answer 10

On Amazon Linux 2 instances, environment variables should be loaded from a different file :

0 3 * * * export $(cat /opt/elasticbeanstalk/deployment/env | xargs); some_command