Environment Variable is not set. Defaulting to a blank string.

[rommik]

A similar question has been floating around stackoverflow and github. Yet, I am not able to solve this problem, I hope somebody can point me in the right direction.

lsb_release

Distributor ID: Debian
Release:        8.8
Codename:       jessie

docker-compose -v docker-compose version 1.9.0, build 2585387

docker -v Docker version 17.05.0-ce, build 89658be

/etc/environment

http_proxy=http://10.50.2.67:3128/
https_proxy=http://10.50.2.67:3128/

/etc/sudoers

...
Defaults        env_keep += "http_proxy"
Defaults        env_keep += "https_proxy"
...

In my docker compose, I'd like to pass both http_proxy and https_proxy as e vars.

...
web:
  environment:
    - http_proxy=$http_proxy
    - https_proxy=$https_proxy

on docker-compose up I get

WARNING: The http_proxy variable is not set. Defaulting to a blank string.
I get the same error with any variables in env list.

What am I doing wrong?

[shin-]

Do you see http_proxy in the output of printenv?

[rommik]

@shin- correct, I can see it in the output of printenv.

XDG_SESSION_ID=4
SHELL=/bin/bash
TERM=cygwin
OLDPWD=/root
http_proxy=10.50.0.137:3128
USER=root
SUDO_USER=root
SUDO_UID=0
USERNAME=root
MAIL=/var/mail/root
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
PWD=/usr/local/bin/docker
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SHLVL=1
SUDO_COMMAND=/bin/su root
HOME=/root
HTTP_PROXY=10.50.0.137:3128
LOGNAME=root
SUDO_GID=0
_=/usr/bin/printenv

I tried to capitalize it as well, just in case.

[rommik]

My present work around is a script like this

#!/bin/bash
cp /etc/environment .env
docker-compose up -d --remove-orphans --force-recreate

I set http_proxy and https_proxy in /etc/environment by another process. Then, I call my script to copy them into .env and spin up my containers. This works fine, but I don't understand why.

[shin-]

Yeah, it should work fine. If you open a python REPL and execute import os; print os.environ, is http_proxy present in the output as well?

[rommik]

Yes, I see them too

Python 2.7.9 (default, Jun 29 2016, 13:08:31)
[GCC 4.9.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import os;
>>> print os.environ;
{'USERNAME': 'root', 'LANG': 'en_US.UTF-8', 'TERM': 'cygwin', 'SHELL': '/bin/bash', 'SUDO_COMMAND': '/bin/su root', 'SHLVL': '1', 'OLDPWD': '/root', 'http_proxy': '10.50.0.137:3128', 'SUDO_
UID': '0', 'HTTP_PROXY': '10.50.0.137:3128', 'PWD': '/usr/local/bin/docker', 'LOGNAME': 'root', 'USER': 'root', 'PATH': '/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin', 'HOME
': '/root', 'MAIL': '/var/mail/root', 'SUDO_USER': 'root', 'XDG_SESSION_ID': '4', 'SUDO_GID': '0', '_': '/usr/bin/python'}
>>>

[sebas5384]

I'm having the same issue, a variable like $PWD isn't being catch by the docker-compose.yml file.

[rommik]

I updated my compose and docker info in the original question, if it helps

[shin-]

@sebas5384 $PWD is a shell variable, not an environment variable. You will have to explicitly include it in the environment (e.g. PWD=$PWD docker-compose up) for it to work.

@rommik 1.9.0 is pretty old as far as docker-compose goes. Can you try upgrading to 1.14.0 and see if anything changes?

[rommik]

@shin- wow! I should have started with that . Thanks :) it is the version of compose file....! 1.14.0 works as expected.

[sebas5384]

@shin- Didn't work either, even passing the variables like you said.

docker@baleia:~/project-fsi$ PWD=$PWD docker-compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up
WARNING: The PWD variable is not set. Defaulting to a blank string

version: '2.2'

services:
  database:
    image: mysql:5.6
    container_name: 'project-fsi-db'
    volumes:
      - ${PWD}/.mysql/:/var/lib/mysql

docker-compose version 1.13.0, build 1719ceb
Docker version 17.06.0-ce, build 02c1d87

I can't understand what is happening, why a variable like $HOME for example is working but the others doesn't.

[shin-]

@sebas5384 In that specific example, replacing ${PWD} with . in your volume definition would work just as well.

I tried reproducing the issue locally (with 1.13 as well) but it works fine for me. Did you make sure $PWD is actually defined locally (i.e. shows up printenv output?) What OS are you running on?

[sebas5384]

@shin- the problem is that I need to load other variables to the docker-compose file.

Yes! they are, all the variables are defined and listed in the printenv.
We are using Ubuntu Server:

Linux version 4.4.0-83-generic (buildd@lgw01-29) (gcc version 5.4.0 20160609 (Ubuntu 5.4.0-6ubuntu1~16.04.4)

We are doing a workaround re-declaring the variables into the .env, but this isn't what we would like to do since each environment has it's own PWD, etc...

BTW: thanks for your help ;)

[jhereth]

I observe the same problem as @sebas5384 , running docker-compose 1.14 on MacOS against docker 1.12 running in a virtualbox (Ubuntu Trusty).

The .env file approach works, environment variables are ignored (though visible in os.environ in a python environment).

[shin-]

@daten-kieker Are you using docker-compose with sudo? It's hard to imagine why Compose wouldn't pick up your env variables.

[jhereth]

@shin- No, no sudo, nothing fancy.

[unstephenk]

I am having the same issue. any updates on this?

[jimmyharris]

I don't understand why someone hasn't modified python's variable substitution code to map $UID and $GID to calls to os.getuid() and os.getgid() on POSIX hosts. Windows doesn't have a similar concept so this wouldn't work on windows instances of docker compose, but that would be dealing with a completely different permission model in any case.

[Jastrzebowski]

I also have an issue with variables in command. My test container (version 3 of compose file):

container:
    image: debian
    command: echo ${FOO}

Run using:

docker-compose up --remove-orphans --force-recreate container

Working fine if I pass variables in .env file or cli:

FOO=cli docker-compose up --remove-orphans --force-recreate container

Not working if I try to set them in named env file secrets.env or directly in docker-compose:

container:
    image: debian
    command: echo ${FOO}
    env_file: secrets.env
    environment:
      FOO: bar

In each scenario, printenv is showing FOO. WARNING: The FOO variable is not set. Defaulting to a blank string. is printed even before the container was downloaded.

docker-compose version 1.14.0, build c7bdf9e
Docker CE Version 17.06.0-ce-mac19 (18663)

[barraquito]

In my case, after updating my docker-composer version to the last one (1.18.0, I was using before 1.14.0, so no suspicion of being the problem, but just in case) and being doing test for a while. Then I realized that my problem came that I have my docker-compose installed as a container, so the service was trying to take the env vars from my docker-compose container, not my local env vars.

I have something like:

service:
    environment:
        FOO

$FOO was present on local environment (I do it in several ways), visible with printenv and from python REPL but wasn't on docker-compose container.

I write it down because I guess it could be enlightening for others.

[olegstepura]

@barraquito so how to pass an ENV variable if you are using docker-compose installed as a container? I just realized the same as you did but have no idea how to fix this.

[barraquito]

@olegstepura in my case, after a first quick research didn't find how to pass the ENV variable to the docker-compose container, so I just installed it without a container. I couldn't research more about that, sorry.

[olegstepura]

That might be an issue to docker-compose since docker-compose running in container is one of the official ways of running docker-compose. @shin- what would you say?

[shin-]

@olegstepura You can do COMPOSE_OPTIONS="-e ENV1=$ENV1 -e ENV2=$ENV2 -e ENVn=$ENVn" docker-compose <command>

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