A simple but integral aspect of Fabric is what is known as the “environment”: a Python dictionary subclass, which is used as a combination settings registry and shared inter-task data namespace.
The environment dict is currently implemented as a global singleton, fabric.state.env, and is included in fabric.api for convenience. Keys in env are sometimes referred to as “env variables”.
Most of Fabric’s behavior is controllable by modifying env variables, such as env.hosts (as seen in the tutorial). Other commonly-modified env vars include:
There are a number of other env variables; for the full list, see Full list of env vars at the bottom of this document.
In many situations, it’s useful to only temporarily modify env vars so that a given settings change only applies to a block of code. Fabric provides a settings context manager, which takes any number of key/value pairs and will use them to modify env within its wrapped block.
For example, there are many situations where setting warn_only (see below) is useful. To apply it to a few lines of code, use settings(warn_only=True), as seen in this simplified version of the contrib exists function:
from fabric.api import settings, run
def exists(path):
with settings(warn_only=True):
return run('test -e %s' % path)
See the Context Managers API documentation for details on settings and other, similar tools.
While it subclasses dict, Fabric’s env has been modified so that its values may be read/written by way of attribute access, as seen in some of the above material. In other words, env.host_string and env['host_string'] are functionally identical. We feel that attribute access can often save a bit of typing and makes the code more readable, so it’s the recommended way to interact with env.
The fact that it’s a dictionary can be useful in other ways, such as with Python’s dict-based string interpolation, which is especially handy if you need to insert multiple env vars into a single string. Using “normal” string interpolation might look like this:
print("Executing on %s as %s" % (env.host, env.user))
Using dict-style interpolation is more readable and slightly shorter:
print("Executing on %(host)s as %(user)s" % env)
Below is a list of all predefined (or defined by Fabric itself during execution) environment variables. While many of them may be manipulated directly, it’s often best to use context_managers, either generally via settings or via specific context managers such as cd.
Note that many of these may be set via fab‘s command-line switches – see fab options and arguments for details. Cross-references are provided where appropriate.
See also
Default: None
Fabric normally handles aborting by printing an error message to stderr and calling sys.exit(1). This setting allows you to override that behavior (which is what happens when env.abort_exception is None.)
Give it a callable which takes a string (the error message that would have been printed) and returns an exception instance. That exception object is then raised instead of SystemExit (which is what sys.exit does.)
Much of the time you’ll want to simply set this to an exception class, as those fit the above description perfectly (callable, take a string, return an exception instance.) E.g. env.abort_exception = MyExceptionClass.
Default: False
When True, Fabric will run in a non-interactive mode, calling abort anytime it would normally prompt the user for input (such as password prompts, “What host to connect to?” prompts, fabfile invocation of prompt, and so forth.) This allows users to ensure a Fabric session will always terminate cleanly instead of blocking on user input forever when unforeseen circumstances arise.
New in version 1.1.
See also
Default: []
Set by fab to the full host list for the currently executing command. For informational purposes only.
See also
Default: True
When set to False, causes run/sudo to act as if they have been called with pty=False.
See also
New in version 1.0.
Default False
When set to True, error output to the terminal is colored red and warnings are colored magenta to make them easier to see.
New in version 1.7.
Default: True
Causes the SSH layer to merge a remote program’s stdout and stderr streams to avoid becoming meshed together when printed. See Combining stdout and stderr for details on why this is needed and what its effects are.
New in version 1.0.
Default: None
Set by fab to the currently executing command name (e.g., when executed as $ fab task1 task2, env.command will be set to "task1" while task1 is executing, and then to "task2".) For informational purposes only.
See also
Default: []
Modified by prefix, and prepended to commands executed by run/sudo.
New in version 1.0.
Default: 1
Number of times Fabric will attempt to connect when connecting to a new server. For backwards compatibility reasons, it defaults to only one connection attempt.
New in version 1.4.
See also
Default: True
Deduplicate merged host lists so any given host string is only represented once (e.g. when using combinations of @hosts + @roles, or -H and -R.)
When set to False, this option relaxes the deduplication, allowing users who explicitly want to run a task multiple times on the same host (say, in parallel, though it works fine serially too) to do so.
New in version 1.5.
Default: False
If True, the SSH layer will skip loading the user’s known-hosts file. Useful for avoiding exceptions in situations where a “known host” changing its host key is actually valid (e.g. cloud servers such as EC2.)
See also
Default: False
If True, causes fab to close connections after each individual task execution, instead of at the end of the run. This helps prevent a lot of typically-unused network sessions from piling up and causing problems with limits on per-process open files, or network hardware.
Note
When active, this setting will result in the disconnect messages appearing throughout your output, instead of at the end. This may be improved in future releases.
Default: []
Set by fab to the roles list of the currently executing command. For informational purposes only.
New in version 1.9.
See also
Default: []
Specifies a list of host strings to be skipped over during fab execution. Typically set via --exclude-hosts/-x.
New in version 1.1.
Default: fabfile.py
Filename pattern which fab searches for when loading fabfiles. To indicate a specific file, use the full path to the file. Obviously, it doesn’t make sense to set this in a fabfile, but it may be specified in a .fabricrc file or on the command line.
See also
Default: None
Enables SSH-driven gatewaying through the indicated host. The value should be a normal Fabric host string as used in e.g. env.host_string. When this is set, newly created connections will be set to route their SSH traffic through the remote SSH daemon to the final destination.
New in version 1.5.
See also
Default: None
Defines the current user/host/port which Fabric will connect to when executing run, put and so forth. This is set by fab when iterating over a previously set host list, and may also be manually set when using Fabric as a library.
See also
Default: False
If True, enables forwarding of your local SSH agent to the remote end.
New in version 1.4.
See also
Default: None
Set to the hostname part of env.host_string by fab. For informational purposes only.
Default: 0 (i.e. no keepalive)
An integer specifying an SSH keepalive interval to use; basically maps to the SSH config option ServerAliveInterval. Useful if you find connections are timing out due to meddlesome network hardware or what have you.
See also
New in version 1.1.
Default: None
A string, or file-like object, containing an SSH key; used during connection authentication.
Note
The most common method for using SSH keys is to set key_filename.
New in version 1.7.
Default: None
May be a string or list of strings, referencing file paths to SSH key files to try when connecting. Passed through directly to the SSH layer. May be set/appended to with -i.
Default: False
Forces buffering by line instead of by character/byte, typically when running in parallel mode. May be activated via --linewise. This option is implied by env.parallel – even if linewise is False, if parallel is True then linewise behavior will occur.
See also
New in version 1.3.
A read-only value containing the local system username. This is the same value as user‘s initial value, but whereas user may be altered by CLI arguments, Python code or specific host strings, local_user will always contain the same value.
Default: False
If True, will tell the SSH layer not to seek out running SSH agents when using key-based authentication.
New in version 0.9.1.
See also
Default: False
If True, will tell the SSH layer not to load any private key files from one’s $HOME/.ssh/ folder. (Key files explicitly loaded via fab -i will still be used, of course.)
New in version 0.9.1.
See also
Default: False
When True, forces all tasks to run in parallel. Implies env.linewise.
New in version 1.3.
See also
Default: None
The default password used by the SSH layer when connecting to remote hosts, and/or when answering sudo prompts.
Default: {}
This dictionary is largely for internal use, and is filled automatically as a per-host-string password cache. Keys are full host strings and values are passwords (strings).
Warning
If you modify or generate this dict manually, you must use fully qualified host strings with user and port values. See the link above for details on the host string API.
See also
New in version 1.0.
Default: ''
Used to set the $PATH shell environment variable when executing commands in run/sudo/local. It is recommended to use the path context manager for managing this value instead of setting it directly.
New in version 1.0.
Default: 0
Sets the number of concurrent processes to use when executing tasks in parallel.
New in version 1.3.
See also
Default: {}
The prompts dictionary allows users to control interactive prompts. If a key in the dictionary is found in a command’s standard output stream, Fabric will automatically answer with the corresponding dictionary value.
New in version 1.9.
Default: None
Set to the port part of env.host_string by fab when iterating over a host list. May also be used to specify a default port.
Default: None
Set by fab with the path to the fabfile it has loaded up, if it got that far. For informational purposes only.
See also
Default: None
Controls whether Ctrl-C triggers an interrupt remotely or is captured locally, as follows:
New in version 1.6.
Default: False
If True, the SSH layer will raise an exception when connecting to hosts not listed in the user’s known-hosts file.
See also
Default: None
If set, should be the path to a known_hosts file. The SSH layer will read this file before reading the user’s known-hosts file.
See also
Default: /bin/bash -l -c
Value used as shell wrapper when executing commands with e.g. run. Must be able to exist in the form <env.shell> "<command goes here>" – e.g. the default uses Bash’s -c option which takes a command string as its value.
See also
--shell, FAQ on bash as default shell, Execution model
Default: False
If True, causes fab (or non-fab use of execute) to skip over hosts it can’t connect to.
New in version 1.4.
Default: False
If True, causes fab (or non-fab use of execute) to skip over tasks not found, without aborting.
See also
Default: $HOME/.ssh/config
Allows specification of an alternate SSH configuration file path.
New in version 1.4.
Default: [0]
Return codes in this list are used to determine whether calls to run/sudo/sudo are considered successful.
New in version 1.6.
Default: "sudo -S -p '%(sudo_prompt)s' " % env
The actual sudo command prefixed onto sudo calls’ command strings. Users who do not have sudo on their default remote $PATH, or who need to make other changes (such as removing the -p when passwordless sudo is in effect) may find changing this useful.
See also
The sudo operation; env.sudo_prompt
Default: "sudo password:"
Passed to the sudo program on remote systems so that Fabric may correctly identify its password prompt.
See also
The sudo operation; env.sudo_prefix
Default: None
Used as a fallback value for sudo‘s user argument if none is given. Useful in combination with settings.
See also
Default: []
Set by fab to the full tasks list to be executed for the currently executing command. For informational purposes only.
See also
Default: True
Global setting which acts like the shell argument to run/sudo: if it is set to False, operations will not wrap executed commands in env.shell.
Default: False
Set to True to cause Fabric to load your local SSH config file.
New in version 1.4.
See also
Default: User’s local username
The username used by the SSH layer when connecting to remote hosts. May be set globally, and will be used when not otherwise explicitly set in host strings. However, when explicitly given in such a manner, this variable will be temporarily overwritten with the current value – i.e. it will always display the user currently being connected as.
To illustrate this, a fabfile:
from fabric.api import env, run
env.user = 'implicit_user'
env.hosts = ['host1', 'explicit_user@host2', 'host3']
def print_user():
with hide('running'):
run('echo "%(user)s"' % env)
and its use:
$ fab print_user
[host1] out: implicit_user
[explicit_user@host2] out: explicit_user
[host3] out: implicit_user
Done.
Disconnecting from host1... done.
Disconnecting from host2... done.
Disconnecting from host3... done.
As you can see, during execution on host2, env.user was set to "explicit_user", but was restored to its previous value ("implicit_user") afterwards.
Note
env.user is currently somewhat confusing (it’s used for configuration and informational purposes) so expect this to change in the future – the informational aspect will likely be broken out into a separate env variable.
See also
Default: current Fabric version string
Mostly for informational purposes. Modification is not recommended, but probably won’t break anything either.
See also