Environment Variables

When you're running a script in an automated environment, you can control wandb with environment variables set before the script runs or within the script.
# This is secret and shouldn't be checked into version control
WANDB_API_KEY=$YOUR_API_KEY
# Name and notes optional
WANDB_NAME="My first run"
WANDB_NOTES="Smaller learning rate, more regularization."
# Only needed if you don't checkin the wandb/settings file
WANDB_ENTITY=$username
WANDB_PROJECT=$project
# If you don't want your script to sync to the cloud
os.environ['WANDB_MODE'] = 'dryrun'
Optional Environment Variables
Use these optional environment variables to do things like set up authentication on remote machines.
Variable name
Usage
WANDB_API_KEY
Sets the authentication key associated with your account. You can find your key on your settings page. This must be set if wandb login hasn't been run on the remote machine.
WANDB_BASE_URL
If you're using wandb/local you should set this environment variable to http://YOUR_IP:YOUR_PORT
WANDB_NAME
The human-readable name of your run. If not set it will be randomly generated for you
WANDB_NOTES
Longer notes about your run.  Markdown is allowed and you can edit this later in the UI.
WANDB_ENTITY
The entity associated with your run. If you have run wandb init in the directory of your training script, it will create a directory named wandb and will save a default entity which can be checked into source control. If you don't want to create that file or want to override the file you can use the environmental variable.
WANDB_USERNAME
The username of a member of your team associated with the run. This can be used along with a service account API key to enable attribution of automated runs to members of your team.
WANDB_USER_EMAIL
The email of a member of your team associated with the run. This can be used along with a service account API key to enable attribution of automated runs to members of your team.
WANDB_PROJECT
The project associated with your run. This can also be set with wandb init, but the environmental variable will override the value.
WANDB_MODE
By default this is set to run which saves results to wandb. If you just want to save your run metadata locally, you can set this to dryrun.
WANDB_TAGS
A comma separated list of tags to be applied to the run.
WANDB_DIR
Set this to an absolute path to store all generated files here instead of the wandb directory relative to your training script. be sure this directory exists and the user your process runs as can write to it
WANDB_RESUME
By default this is set to never. If set to auto wandb will automatically resume failed runs. If set to must forces the run to exist on startup. If you want to always generate your own unique ids, set this to allow and always set WANDB_RUN_ID.
WANDB_RUN_ID
Set this to a globally unique string (per project) corresponding to a single run of your script. It must be no longer than 64 characters. All non-word characters will be converted to dashes. This can be used to resume an existing run in cases of failure.
WANDB_IGNORE_GLOBS
Set this to a comma separated list of file globs to ignore. These files will not be synced to the cloud.
WANDB_ERROR_REPORTING
Set this to false to prevent wandb from logging fatal errors to its error tracking system.
WANDB_SHOW_RUN
Set this to true to automatically open a browser with the run url if your operating system supports it.
WANDB_DOCKER
Set this to a docker image digest to enable restoring of runs. This is set automatically with the wandb docker command. You can obtain an image digest by running wandb docker my/image/name:tag --digest
WANDB_DISABLE_CODE
Set this to true to prevent wandb from storing a reference to your source code
WANDB_ANONYMOUS
Set this to "allow", "never", or "must" to let users create anonymous runs with secret urls.
WANDB_CONSOLE
Set this to "off" to disable stdout / stderr logging.  This defaults to "on" in environments that support it.
WANDB_CONFIG_PATHS
Comma separated list of yaml files to load into wandb.config.  See config.
WANDB_CONFIG_DIR
This defaults to ~/.config/wandb, you can override this location with this environment variable
WANDB_NOTEBOOK_NAME
If you're running in jupyter you can set the name of the notebook with this variable. We attempt to auto detect this.
WANDB_HOST
Set this to the hostname you want to see in the wandb interface if you don't want to use the system provided hostname
WANDB_SILENT
Set this to true to silence wandb log statements. If this is set all logs will be written to WANDB_DIR/debug.log
WANDB_RUN_GROUP
Specify the experiment name to automatically group runs together. See grouping for more info.
WANDB_JOB_TYPE
Specify the job type, like "training" or "evaluation" to indicate different types of runs. See grouping for more info.
Singularity Environments
If you're running containers in Singularity you can pass environment variables by pre-pending the above variables with SINGULARITYENV_. More details about Singularity environment variables can be found here.
Running on AWS
If you're running batch jobs in AWS, it's easy to authenticate your machines with your W&B credentials. Get your API key from your settings page, and set the WANDB_API_KEY environment variable in the AWS batch job spec.
Common Questions
Automated runs and service accounts
If you have automated tests or internal tools that launch runs logging to W&B, create a Service Account on your team settings page. This will allow you to use a service API key for your automated jobs. If you want to attribute service account jobs to a specific user, you can use the WANDB_USERNAME or WANDB_USER_EMAIL environment variables.
Create a service account on your team settings page for automated jobs
This is useful for continuous integration and tools like TravisCI or CircleCI if you're setting up automated unit tests.
Do environment variables overwrite the parameters passed to wandb.init()?
Arguments passed to wandb.init take precedence over the environment. You could call wandb.init(dir=os.getenv("WANDB_DIR", my_default_override)) if you want to have a default other than the system default when the environment variable isn't set.
Turn off logging
The command wandb off sets an environment variable, WANDB_MODE=dryrun . This stops any data from syncing from your machine to the remote wandb server. If you have multiple projects, they will all stop syncing logged data to W&B servers.
To quiet the warning messages:
import logging
logger = logging.getLogger("wandb")
logger.setLevel(logging.WARNING)
Multiple wandb users on shared machines
If you're using a shared machine and another person is a wandb user, it's easy to make sure your runs are always logged to the proper account. Set the WANDB_API_KEY environment variable to authenticate. If you source it in your env, when you log in you'll have the right credentials, or you can set the environment variable from your script.
Run this command export WANDB_API_KEY=X where X is your API key. When you're logged in, you can find your API key at wandb.ai/authorize.

Distributed Training

Group Runs

Last updated 1 month ago

Variable name	Usage
WANDB_API_KEY	Sets the authentication key associated with your account. You can find your key on your settings page. This must be set if `wandb login` hasn't been run on the remote machine.
WANDB_BASE_URL	If you're using wandb/local you should set this environment variable to `http://YOUR_IP:YOUR_PORT`
WANDB_NAME	The human-readable name of your run. If not set it will be randomly generated for you
WANDB_NOTES	Longer notes about your run. Markdown is allowed and you can edit this later in the UI.
WANDB_ENTITY	The entity associated with your run. If you have run `wandb init` in the directory of your training script, it will create a directory named wandb and will save a default entity which can be checked into source control. If you don't want to create that file or want to override the file you can use the environmental variable.
WANDB_USERNAME	The username of a member of your team associated with the run. This can be used along with a service account API key to enable attribution of automated runs to members of your team.
WANDB_USER_EMAIL	The email of a member of your team associated with the run. This can be used along with a service account API key to enable attribution of automated runs to members of your team.
WANDB_PROJECT	The project associated with your run. This can also be set with `wandb init`, but the environmental variable will override the value.
WANDB_MODE	By default this is set to run which saves results to wandb. If you just want to save your run metadata locally, you can set this to dryrun.
WANDB_TAGS	A comma separated list of tags to be applied to the run.
WANDB_DIR	Set this to an absolute path to store all generated files here instead of the wandb directory relative to your training script. be sure this directory exists and the user your process runs as can write to it
WANDB_RESUME	By default this is set to never. If set to auto wandb will automatically resume failed runs. If set to must forces the run to exist on startup. If you want to always generate your own unique ids, set this to allow and always set WANDB_RUN_ID.
WANDB_RUN_ID	Set this to a globally unique string (per project) corresponding to a single run of your script. It must be no longer than 64 characters. All non-word characters will be converted to dashes. This can be used to resume an existing run in cases of failure.
WANDB_IGNORE_GLOBS	Set this to a comma separated list of file globs to ignore. These files will not be synced to the cloud.
WANDB_ERROR_REPORTING	Set this to false to prevent wandb from logging fatal errors to its error tracking system.
WANDB_SHOW_RUN	Set this to true to automatically open a browser with the run url if your operating system supports it.
WANDB_DOCKER	Set this to a docker image digest to enable restoring of runs. This is set automatically with the wandb docker command. You can obtain an image digest by running `wandb docker my/image/name:tag --digest`
WANDB_DISABLE_CODE	Set this to true to prevent wandb from storing a reference to your source code
WANDB_ANONYMOUS	Set this to "allow", "never", or "must" to let users create anonymous runs with secret urls.
WANDB_CONSOLE	Set this to "off" to disable stdout / stderr logging. This defaults to "on" in environments that support it.
WANDB_CONFIG_PATHS	Comma separated list of yaml files to load into wandb.config. See config.
WANDB_CONFIG_DIR	This defaults to ~/.config/wandb, you can override this location with this environment variable
WANDB_NOTEBOOK_NAME	If you're running in jupyter you can set the name of the notebook with this variable. We attempt to auto detect this.
WANDB_HOST	Set this to the hostname you want to see in the wandb interface if you don't want to use the system provided hostname
WANDB_SILENT	Set this to true to silence wandb log statements. If this is set all logs will be written to WANDB_DIR/debug.log
WANDB_RUN_GROUP	Specify the experiment name to automatically group runs together. See grouping for more info.
WANDB_JOB_TYPE	Specify the job type, like "training" or "evaluation" to indicate different types of runs. See grouping for more info.