How can I set environment variables for a different user

Question

I'm trying to get 2 docker containers started and linked together with a rails app. This app relies on these environment variables:

POSTGRES_PORT_5432_TCP_ADDR POSTGRES_PORT_5432_TCP_PORT 

When I do env as root I'm getting:

POSTGRES_PORT_5432_TCP_PORT=5432 POSTGRES_PORT_5432_TCP_ADDR=172.17.0.2 

When I run it under root I'm not getting any problem and it works. However the application runs as app user. When I do env as app:

root@f80f94948393:/home/app# sudo -u app env 

I'm not seeing those variables. I googled around and have altered these files already:

/etc/environment

POSTGRES_PORT_5432_TCP_ADDR="172.17.0.2" POSTGRES_PORT_5432_TCP_PORT="5432" 

/home/app/.profile

POSTGRES_PORT_5432_TCP_PORT="5432";export POSTGRES_PORT_5432_TCP_PORT POSTGRES_PORT_5432_TCP_ADDR="172.17.0.2";export POSTGRES_PORT_5432_TCP_ADDR 

/home/app/.bashrc

POSTGRES_PORT_5432_TCP_PORT="5432";export POSTGRES_PORT_5432_TCP_PORT POSTGRES_PORT_5432_TCP_ADDR="172.17.0.2";export POSTGRES_PORT_5432_TCP_ADDR 

But nothing seems to help. The variables aren't showing up with app user.

What am I missing here?

Answer 1

I do not know how you run the program as non-root, bu when you use sudo, you may use -E (see: man sudo) that should preserve env.

Otherwise you may add those variables into system-wide .bashrc (/etc/bash.bashrc) if you use bash at all.