Re: $USER and $HOME shell variables not set

[Eric Wong <e@80x24.org>]

Russell Jennings <violentpurr@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am running into some issues with these variables being set - since I
> am spawning a script from a unicorn worker (via a rails controller) I
> figured I’d ask here. 
> 
> Here is the stackoverflow with the full background:
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29233181/why-is-envhome-nil-in-my-rake-task
> 
> in short: does unicorn have anything to do with $HOME or $USER not
> being defined?

Nope, unicorn itself does not change these variables.  We only set
UNICORN_FD (for SIGUSR2 upgrades), PWD (if working_directory is used).

Your init system may change users and clobber these options via
sudo/su/env and similar wrappers, so I think it has to do with how
you're starting unicorn.  If you're using sudo anywhere, the env_*
options from the sudoers files will also affect which envs get
clobbered/preserved/added.

> From what I can tell, that its unicorn is the only
> thing thats different versus running the same ruby via a rails console
> (which does indeed set those shell variables correctly)
> 
> in no mans land, so any hep or insight would be greatly appreciated. 

Can you add something to log the contents of ENV.inspect to
a log file.  Perhaps something like:

	Rails.logger.debug("env: #{ENV.inspect}")

It would also be helpful to show the snippet of code from where you're
running Rake in case you're accidentally setting an option wrong.


Under Linux, you can also inspect the original environment of any running
process from /proc/$PID/environ  In most cases/kernel versions, it won't
keep up with env changes once a process is running.
I use tr to replace '\0' with '\n' (newline) to help with readability

	tr '\0' '\n' </proc/$PID/environ