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Env vars

Environment Variables¤

Pwndbg relies on several environment variables to customize its behavior. Below is a list of these variables and their purposes:

  • PATH: Standard system PATH variable used to locate executables.
  • EDITOR, VISUAL: Used by the cymbol command to open an editor.
  • HOME, XDG_CACHE_HOME: Used by lib.tempfile to determine temporary file locations.
  • PWNDBG_VENV_PATH: Specifies the virtual environment path for Pwndbg.
  • NO_COLOR: Disables colored output in Pwndbg.
  • PWNDBG_LOGLEVEL: Initial log level to use for log messages.
  • OPENAI_API_KEY, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY: Used by the ai command for accessing respective AI APIs.
  • GITHUB_ACTIONS, RUN_FLAKY: Used by tests_commands.py to determine the test environment.
  • PWNDBG_PROFILE: Enables profiling for benchmarking.
  • USE_PDB: Enables Python debugger in tests.
  • PWNDBG_LAUNCH_TEST: Used by tests to configure test launching.
  • PWNDBG_ARCH, PWNDBG_KERNEL_TYPE, PWNDBG_KERNEL_VERSION: Used by gdblib kernel tests to specify kernel parameters.
  • SPHINX: Used by docs/source/conf.py, likely to be removed.
  • PWNLIB_NOTERM=1: Set by Pwndbg to avoid terminal issues with Pwntools.