IPython Notebook doesn't see environment variables with "bash magic"

Question

I am running IPython Notebook on a vagrant virtual machine, and port-forwarding to my local machine so that I can view the notebook in my web browser. I run a bootstrap script that sets an an environment variable JYTHON_HOME in my /etc/environment with:

sudo echo "JYTHON_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/jython" | sudo tee -a /etc/environment
source /etc/environment

The boot script later starts up ipython notebook. When I open up the notebook,

%%bash
cat /etc/environment

yeilds

PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games"
JYTHON_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/jython

but

%%bash
echo $JYTHON_HOME

prints an empty line.

I have also tried to append the export line to ~/.profile, /.profile, ~/.bashrc, and etc/profile, all with the same result. I know that the notebook is operating as root, but I can't seem to be able to get it to see my environment variable. What can I include in my boostrapping script that will remedy this?

Sean · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-18 21:12:35Z

2

I needed to actually export the variable in the script itself.

sudo echo "JYTHON_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/jython" | sudo tee -a /etc/environment
source /etc/environment
export JYTHON_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/jython

answered Jul 18, 2013 at 21:12

Sean

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