Environment variables ignored by PHP-FPM

Wondering why PHP doesn’t see your environment variables? Why getenv('var') won’t return a value while it does on the commandline?

You’re probably using PHP-FPM.

Cause: The environment, with all its variables, is cleared for FPM. This is default behavior.

This is done in the pool-configuration.

Let’s get that out of the way. It’s actually quite easy.

Solution: Uncomment the line which says clear_env = no in your pool config like fpm/pool.d/www.conf :

; Clear environment in FPM workers
; Prevents arbitrary environment variables from reaching FPM worker processes
; by clearing the environment in workers before env vars specified in this
; pool configuration are added.
; Setting to "no" will make all environment variables available to PHP code
; via getenv(), $_ENV and $_SERVER.
; Default Value: yes
clear_env = no

Found it on this pretty old thread dating back to 2015 on GitHub.