- Environment variables
- Contents
- Utilities
- Defining variables
- Globally
- Per user
- Graphical environment
- Per session
- Examples
- Default programs
- Using pam_env
- Linux List All Environment Variables Command
- Linux list all environment variables command
- A list of the commonly used variables in Linux
- set and env command
- A note about env/set command
- Conclusion
Environment variables
An environment variable is a named object that contains data used by one or more applications. In simple terms, it is a variable with a name and a value. The value of an environmental variable can for example be the location of all executable files in the file system, the default editor that should be used, or the system locale settings. Users new to Linux may often find this way of managing settings a bit unmanageable. However, environment variables provide a simple way to share configuration settings between multiple applications and processes in Linux.
Contents
Utilities
The coreutils package contains the programs printenv and env. To list the current environmental variables with values:
The env utility can be used to run a command under a modified environment. The following example will launch xterm with the environment variable EDITOR set to vim . This will not affect the global environment variable EDITOR .
The Bash builtin set allows you to change the values of shell options and set the positional parameters, or to display the names and values of shell variables. For more information, see the set builtin documentation.
Each process stores their environment in the /proc/$PID/environ file. This file contains each key value pair delimited by a nul character ( \x0 ). A more human readable format can be obtained with sed, e.g. sed ‘s:\x0:\n:g’ /proc/$PID/environ .
Defining variables
Globally
Most Linux distributions tell you to change or add environment variable definitions in /etc/profile or other locations. Keep in mind that there are also package-specific configuration files containing variable settings such as /etc/locale.conf . Be sure to maintain and manage the environment variables and pay attention to the numerous files that can contain environment variables. In principle, any shell script can be used for initializing environmental variables, but following traditional UNIX conventions, these statements should only be present in some particular files.
The following files should be used for defining global environment variables on your system: /etc/environment , /etc/profile and shell specific configuration files. Each of these files has different limitations, so you should carefully select the appropriate one for your purposes.
- /etc/environment is used by the pam_env module and is shell agnostic so scripting or glob expansion cannot be used. The file only accepts variable=value pairs. See pam_env(8) and pam_env.conf(5) for details.
- /etc/profile initializes variables for login shells only. It does, however, run scripts and can be used by all Bourne shell compatible shells.
- Shell specific configuration files — Global configuration files of your shell, initializes variables and runs scripts. For example Bash#Configuration files or Zsh#Startup/Shutdown files.
In this example, we add
/bin directory to the PATH for respective user. To do this, just put this in your preferred global environment variable config file ( /etc/profile or /etc/bash.bashrc ):
Per user
You do not always want to define an environment variable globally. For instance, you might want to add /home/my_user/bin to the PATH variable but do not want all other users on your system to have that in their PATH too. Local environment variables can be defined in many different files:
/.pam_environment is the user specific equivalent of /etc/security/pam_env.conf [1], used by pam_env module. See pam_env(8) and pam_env.conf(5) for details.
To add a directory to the PATH for local usage, put following in
To update the variable, re-login or source the file: $ source
/.bashrc etc. This means that, for example, dbus activated programs like Gnome Files will not use them by default. See Systemd/User#Environment variables.
Reading
/.pam_environment is deprecated and the feature will be removed at some point in the future.
Graphical environment
Environment variables for Xorg applications can be set in xinitrc, or in xprofile when using a display manager, for example:
The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed.
/.config/environment.d/ on Wayland sessions is GDM-specific behavior. (Discuss in Talk:Environment variables)
Applications running on Wayland may use systemd user environment variables instead, as Wayland does not initiate any Xorg related files:
To set environment variables only for a specific application instead of the whole session, edit the application’s .desktop file. See Desktop entries#Modify environment variables for instructions.
Per session
Sometimes even stricter definitions are required. One might want to temporarily run executables from a specific directory created without having to type the absolute path to each one, or editing shell configuration files for the short time needed to run them.
In this case, you can define the PATH variable in your current session, combined with the export command. As long as you do not log out, the PATH variable will be using the temporary settings. To add a session-specific directory to PATH , issue:
Examples
The following section lists a number of common environment variables used by a Linux system and describes their values.
- DE indicates the Desktop Environment being used. xdg-open will use it to choose more user-friendly file-opener application that desktop environment provides. Some packages need to be installed to use this feature. For GNOME, that would be libgnomeAUR ; for Xfce this is exo . Recognised values of DE variable are: gnome , kde , xfce , lxde and mate .
The DE environment variable needs to be exported before starting the window manager. For example: This will make xdg-open use the more user-friendly exo-open, because it assumes it is running inside Xfce. Use exo-preferred-applications for configuring.
- DESKTOP_SESSION is similar to DE , but used in LXDE desktop environment: when DESKTOP_SESSION is set to LXDE , xdg-open will use PCManFM file associations.
- PATH contains a colon-separated list of directories in which your system looks for executable files. When a regular command (e.g. ls, systemctl or pacman) is interpreted by the shell (e.g. bash or zsh), the shell looks for an executable file with the same name as your command in the listed directories, and executes it. To run executables that are not listed in PATH , a relative or absolute path to the executable must be given, e.g. ./a.out or /bin/ls .
- HOME contains the path to the home directory of the current user. This variable can be used by applications to associate configuration files and such like with the user running it.
- PWD contains the path to your working directory.
- OLDPWD contains the path to your previous working directory, that is, the value of PWD before last cd was executed.
- TERM contains the type of the running terminal, e.g. xterm-256color . It is used by programs running in the terminal that wish to use terminal-specific capabilities.
- MAIL contains the location of incoming email. The traditional setting is /var/spool/mail/$LOGNAME .
- ftp_proxy and http_proxy contains FTP and HTTP proxy server, respectively:
- MANPATH contains a colon-separated list of directories in which man searches for the man pages.
- INFODIR contains a colon-separated list of directories in which the info command searches for the info pages, e.g., /usr/share/info:/usr/local/share/info
- TZ can be used to to set a time zone different to the system zone for a user. The zones listed in /usr/share/zoneinfo/ can be used as reference, for example TZ=»:/usr/share/zoneinfo/Pacific/Fiji» . When pointing the TZ variable to a zoneinfo file, it should start with a colon per the GNU manual.
Default programs
- SHELL contains the path to the user’s preferred shell. Note that this is not necessarily the shell that is currently running, although Bash sets this variable on startup.
- PAGER contains command to run the program used to list the contents of files, e.g., /bin/less .
- EDITOR contains the command to run the lightweight program used for editing files, e.g., /usr/bin/nano . For example, you can write an interactive switch between gedit under X or nano, in this example:
- VISUAL contains command to run the full-fledged editor that is used for more demanding tasks, such as editing mail (e.g., vi , vim, emacs etc).
- BROWSER contains the path to the web browser. Helpful to set in an interactive shell configuration file so that it may be dynamically altered depending on the availability of a graphic environment, such as X:
Using pam_env
The PAM module pam_env(8) loads the variables to be set in the environment from the following files: /etc/security/pam_env.conf , /etc/environment and
- /etc/environment must consist of simple VARIABLE=value pairs on separate lines, for example:
- /etc/security/pam_env.conf and
/.pam_environment share the same following format: @
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Linux List All Environment Variables Command
- printenv command – Print all or part of environment.
- env command – Display all exported environment or run a program in a modified environment.
- set command – List the name and value of each shell variable.
| Tutorial details | |
|---|---|
| Difficulty level | Easy |
| Root privileges | No |
| Requirements | Linux or Unix |
| Est. reading time | 4 mintues |
Linux list all environment variables command
I recommend that you use the printenv command. The syntax is:
Fig.01: Command to see a list of all currently defined environment variables in a Linux bash terminal
A list of the commonly used variables in Linux
We use the printf command/echo command to display values of the shell varible in Linux.
| System Variable | Meaning | To view variable value type |
|---|---|---|
| BASH_VERSION | Holds the version of this instance of bash. | echo $BASH_VERSION |
| HOSTNAME | The name of the your computer. | echo $HOSTNAME |
| CDPATH | The search path for the cd command. | echo $CDPATH |
| HISTFILE | The name of the file in which command history is saved. | echo $HISTFILE |
| HISTFILESIZE | The maximum number of lines contained in the history file. | echo $HISTFILESIZE |
| HISTSIZE | The number of commands to remember in the command history. The default value is 500. | echo $HISTSIZE |
| HOME | The home directory of the current user. | echo $HOME |
| IFS | The Internal Field Separator that is used for word splitting after expansion and to split lines into words with the read builtin command. The default value is . | echo $IFS |
| LANG | Used to determine the locale category for any category not specifically selected with a variable starting with LC_. | echo $LANG |
| PATH | The search path for commands. It is a colon-separated list of directories in which the shell looks for commands. | echo $PATH |
| PS1 | Your prompt settings. | echo $PS1 |
| TMOUT | The default timeout for the read builtin command. Also in an interactive shell, the value is interpreted as the number of seconds to wait for input after issuing the command. If not input provided it will logou user. | echo $TMOUT |
| TERM | Your login terminal type. | echo $TERM export TERM=vt100 |
| SHELL | Set path to login shell. | echo $SHELL |
| DISPLAY | Set X display name | echo $DISPLAY export DISPLAY=:0.1 |
| EDITOR | Set name of default text editor. | export EDITOR=/usr/bin/vim |
set and env command
You can use the env / set command too:
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A note about env/set command
The env will only display a list of environment variables that have been exported and it will not show all bash variables. The set command allows you to change the values of shell options and set the positional parameters, or to display the names and values of shell variables. If no options or arguments are supplied, set displays the names and values of all shell variables and functions, sorted according to the current locale, in a format that may be reused as input for setting or resetting the currently-set variables. Hence, I recommend that you use printenv command to dump the list of all shell variables on screen. To save the list of all shell environment variables to a file, enter:
Use the grep command to search for particular variable:
Conclusion
You learned about listing all Linux shell environment variables. See the following resources for more information:
- Bash shell variables from the Linux shell scripting wiki.
- See the following man pages using the man command or help command:
man ‘printenv(1)’
man 1 bash
man 1 env
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Comments on this entry are closed.
Thank you aref ghobadi Aug 18, 2015 @ 8:33
Thank you for this useful information.
Thank you.It’s really helpful.
Thank you. This is a very informative.
Note that set will show all unexported shell variables (e.g. like PS1 , TMOUT ) whereas env or printenv will not.
Thanks for the input 🙂
With environment variables, what’s the maximum amount of characters a environment variable can have?
and is it possible to set this higher?
The theoretical max length of an environment variable is around 32,760 characters. The maximum size of an environment variable value depends upon execve(). Try:
false | xargs —show-limits
Which gives out:
On my box it went up to 512MiB and failed with the following message (see image here)[1]:
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