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This page covers sandbox configuration options including environment variables and connecting external storage buckets.

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Environment variables

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Default environment variables

Upon creating a sandbox, useful sandbox metadata is set as environment variables for commands:
  • E2B_SANDBOX is set to true for processes to know if they are inside our VM.
  • E2B_SANDBOX_ID to know the ID of the sandbox.
  • E2B_TEAM_ID to know the team ID that created the sandbox.
  • E2B_TEMPLATE_ID to know what template was used for the current sandbox.
You can try it out by running the following code in the sandbox: 
const sandbox = await Sandbox.create()
const result = await sandbox.commands.run('echo $E2B_SANDBOX_ID')
These default environment variables are only accessible via the SDK, when using the CLI you can find them in the form of dot files in the /run/e2b/ dir:
user@e2b:~$ ls -a /run/e2b/
.E2B_SANDBOX  .E2B_SANDBOX_ID  .E2B_TEAM_ID  .E2B_TEMPLATE_ID

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Setting environment variables

There are 3 ways to set environment variables in a sandbox:
  1. Global environment variables when creating the sandbox.
  2. When running code in the sandbox.
  3. When running commands in the sandbox.

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1. Global environment variables

You can set global environment variables when creating a sandbox. 
const sandbox = await Sandbox.create({
  envs: {
    MY_VAR: 'my_value',
  },
})

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2. Setting environment variables when running code

You can set environment variables for specific code execution call in the sandbox.
  • These environment variables are scoped to the command but are not private in the OS.
  • If you had a global environment variable with the same name, it will be overridden only for the command.
const sandbox = await Sandbox.create()
const result = await sandbox.runCode('import os; print(os.environ.get("MY_VAR"))', {
  envs: {
    MY_VAR: 'my_value',
  },
})

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3. Setting environment variables when running commands

You can set environment variables for specific command execution in the sandbox.
  • These environment variables are scoped to the command but are not private in the OS.
  • If you had a global environment variable with the same name, it will be overridden only for the command.
const sandbox = await Sandbox.create()
sandbox.commands.run('echo $MY_VAR', {
  envs: {
    MY_VAR: '123',
  },
})

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Storage buckets

To connect a bucket for storing data from the sandbox, you can use the FUSE file system to mount the bucket inside the sandbox. You will need to create a custom sandbox template with the FUSE file system installed. The guide for building a custom sandbox template can be found here.

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Google Cloud Storage

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Prerequisites

To use Google Cloud Storage, you’ll need a bucket and a service account. You can create a service account here and a bucket here. If you want to write to the bucket, make sure the service account has the Storage Object User role for this bucket. You can find a guide on creating a service account key here.

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Mounting the bucket

To use the Google Cloud Storage we need to install the gcsfuse package. There’s simple template that can be used to create a container with the gcsfuse installed. 
const template = Template()
  .fromTemplate("code-interpreter-v1")
  .aptInstall(["gnupg", "lsb-release"])
  .runCmd("lsb_release -c -s > /tmp/lsb_release")
  .runCmd(
    'GCSFUSE_REPO=$(cat /tmp/lsb_release) && echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/cloud.google.asc] https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt gcsfuse-$GCSFUSE_REPO main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gcsfuse.list',
  )
  .runCmd(
    "curl https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/cloud.google.asc",
  )
  .aptInstall(["gcsfuse"])
The bucket is mounted during the sandbox runtime using the gcsfuse command. 
import { Sandbox } from 'e2b'

const sandbox = await Sandbox.create('<your template id>')
await sandbox.files.makeDir('/home/user/bucket')
await sandbox.files.write('key.json', '<your service account key>')

await sandbox.commands.run('sudo gcsfuse <flags> --key-file /home/user/key.json <bucket-name> /home/user/bucket')

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Flags

The complete list of flags is available here.

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Allow the default user to access the files

To allow the default user to access the files, we can use the following flags: 
-o allow_other -file-mode=777 -dir-mode=777

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Amazon S3

To use Amazon S3, we can use the s3fs package. The template setup is similar to that of Google Cloud Storage. 
const template = Template()
  .fromImage("ubuntu:latest")
  .aptInstall(["s3fs"])
Similar to Google Cloud Storage, the bucket is mounted during the runtime of the sandbox. The s3fs command is used to mount the bucket to the sandbox. 
import { Sandbox } from 'e2b'

const sandbox = await Sandbox.create('<your template id>')
await sandbox.files.makeDir('/home/user/bucket')

// Create a file with the credentials
// If you use another path for the credentials you need to add the path in the command s3fs command
await sandbox.files.write('/root/.passwd-s3fs', '<AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID>:<AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY>')
await sandbox.commands.run('sudo chmod 600 /root/.passwd-s3fs')

await sandbox.commands.run('sudo s3fs <flags> <bucket-name> /home/user/bucket')

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Flags

The complete list of flags is available here.

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Allow the default user to access the files

To allow the default user to access the files, add the following flag: 
-o allow_other

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Cloudflare R2

For Cloudflare R2, we can use a setup very similar to S3. The template remains the same as for S3. However, the mounting differs slightly; we need to specify the endpoint for R2. 
import { Sandbox } from 'e2b'

const sandbox = await Sandbox.create({ template: '<your template id>' })
await sandbox.files.makeDir('/home/user/bucket')

// Create a file with the R2 credentials
// If you use another path for the credentials you need to add the path in the command s3fs command
await sandbox.files.write('/root/.passwd-s3fs', '<R2_ACCESS_KEY_ID>:<R2_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY>')
await sandbox.commands.run('sudo chmod 600 /root/.passwd-s3fs')

await sandbox.commands.run('sudo s3fs -o url=https://<ACCOUNT ID>.r2.cloudflarestorage.com <flags> <bucket-name> /home/user/bucket')

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Flags

It’s the same as for S3.