Setting environment variable for a Compute Engine VM

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I need to set an environment variable within my virtual machine on Google Compute Engine. The variable I need to set is called "GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS"and according to Google documentation I need to set its value to the path of a json file. I have two questions:

1: Can I set this variable within the Google Compute Engine interface on GCP?

2: Can I use System.Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS", Resources.googlecredentials.credentials);? Whenever I try and set this variable on my local machine I use this technique, but I set the value to the path of the file (local directory). However, because I am now using a virtual machine, I was wondering, can I set the environment variable to the actual contents of a resource file? Advantageously, this allows me to embed the credentials into the actual app itself.

Cheers

google-compute-engine google-cloud-platform virtual-machine embedded-resource environment-variables
3 Answers

Store your credentials in a file temporarily

$HOME/example/g-credentials.json

{
  "foo": "bar"
}

Then upload it to your GCE projects metadata as a string

gcloud compute project-info add-metadata \
    --metadata-from-file g-credentials=$HOME/example/g-credentials.json

You can view your GCE projects metadata on the cloud console by searching for metadata or you can view it by using gcloud 

gcloud compute project-info describe

Then set the env var/load the config in your VMs startup script

$HOME/example/startup.txt

#! /bin/bash

# gce project metadata key where the config json is stored as a string
meta_key=g-credentials
env_key=GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS
config_file=/opt/g-credentials.json
env_file=/etc/profile

# command to set env variable
temp_cmd="export $env_key=$config_file"

# command to write $temp_cmd to file if $temp_cmd doesnt exist w/in it
perm_cmd="grep -q -F '$temp_cmd' $env_file || echo '$temp_cmd' >> $env_file"

# set the env var for only for the duration of this script.
# can delete this if you don't start processes at the end of
# this script that utilize the env var.
eval $temp_cmd

# set the env var permanently for any SUBSEQUENT shell logins
eval $perm_cmd

# load the config from the projects metadata
config=`curl -f http://metadata.google.internal/computeMetadata/v1/project/attributes/$meta_key -H "Metadata-Flavor: Google" 2>/dev/null`

# write it to file
echo $config > $config_file

# start other processes below ...

example instance

gcloud compute instances create vm-1 \
    --metadata-from-file startup-script=$HOME/example/startup.txt \
    --zone=us-west1-a
user_79293140

you could also edit the user's profile:

nano ~/.bashrc

or even system-wide with /etc/profile, /etc/bash.bashrc, or /etc/environment

and then add:

export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=...

Custom Metadata can also be used, which is rather GCE specific.

user_5493720
  1. Yes, you could set it within your RDP/SSH session.
  2. No, you should set the path in the variable according to the documentation, alternatively, there are code examples that gather the service account path in a variable to use the credentials within your applications.
user_58802340
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