Environment variables

Polythene recognizes the following environment variables:

• POLYTHENE_STORE – Directory to hold exported root filesystems. Defaults to /var/tmp/polythene. Command line options take precedence over the variable.
• POLYTHENE_VERBOSE – Enable verbose logging when set to any value.
• POLYTHENE_ISOLATION – Preferred isolation backend used when no --isolation flag is provided. The CLI and PolytheneSession helper both honour the value and fall back to their built-in defaults when the variable is unset.

The CLI also sets two Podman hardening variables if they are not already set: CONTAINERS_STORAGE_DRIVER=vfs and CONTAINERS_EVENTS_BACKEND=file.