Setting environment variables in jupyter hub

Question

I followed approach in this thread. I can easily set env variable in jupyter hub using the %env VAR = 5. However, when I try to print out this variable in the terminal I get only a blank line, as if the variable did not exist at all. Is it somehow possible to be able to print in terminal the env var defined in the notebook?

Answer 1

Setting environment variables from the notebook results in these variables being available only from that notebook.

%env VAR=TEST
import os
print(os.environ["VAR"])
...
>>> TEST

If you want to persist the variable, you need to put it either in the kernel.json file, or in systemd service file for jupyterhub, or in something like ~/.bashrc.