Variables and environment files (Beta)

Environment variables are shared by the app components of one environment. Save them under Variables, or paste an env file into Import. Saving, importing or deleting variables marks components “Redeploy to apply”; it does not immediately change running servers.

Names, values and secrets

Keys use uppercase letters, digits and underscores, cannot start with a digit, and are at most 255 characters. Bash control/special variables and startup hooks are reserved. Values can contain spaces, quotes, dollar signs and multiple lines. Line endings are normalized to LF; NUL bytes are rejected.

Mark sensitive values as secret. Stored values are encrypted, and secret values are not returned to the page. Editing a secret lets you keep the existing value or explicitly replace it, including with an empty string. Making a secret public requires a replacement value; it does not reveal the old one.

Import previews keys and suggested secret flags, not values. Names containing PASSWORD, SECRET, TOKEN, KEY or PRIVATE, and names ending in _URL, are suggested as secret. These guesses are conservative: confirm the flags before importing. Import overwrites matching keys and keeps others; duplicate keys or invalid input reject the entire import. Values are literal, not interpolated from other variables.

Resolution order

From lowest to highest priority:

1. Resource connection variables and optional preset aliases.
2. Explicit environment variables.
3. Vito-computed values, such as PORT for a proxy web component.

The Variables page labels read-only resource/Vito values and component-specific overrides. Connection addresses can differ per component because a local resource uses loopback while a remote one uses a private network. Resource passwords, URLs and preset aliases are masked.

On the server

Each component has its own protected env file, linked as .env in releases. Vito writes it with mode 600 as the component user, and writes its vito-env-exec loader with mode 700. Proxy processes, workers, scheduler commands and deployment scripts use this loader. It parses values as data, never sources or evals the file.

PHP-FPM pools are shared per Linux user/PHP version, including with Sites. Vito does not put application variables in FPM pool or vhost configuration. FPM applications must read the release's .env using their own dotenv support. Vito also keeps variable values out of Supervisor and cron configurations; user-authored commands must not echo secrets into logs.

The generated file uses literal quoting. Vito's loader preserves the supported values exactly; third-party dotenv readers differ, particularly for escaped quotes, dollar signs, backslashes and multiline values in double quotes. Test your runtime's parser rather than assuming Node --env-file, PHP, Ruby and shell parsing are interchangeable. Never source the generated file yourself.

A full deployment snapshots variables when it starts. Build and release-command scripts load the staged file; release activates it and post-release uses the live file. Edits during a run stay flagged for the next deployment. Automatic release recovery restores the previous file with the previous code. An explicit environment rollback is code-only and keeps the currently live variables.