# Access to environment variable created by elasticsearchRefs in initContainer

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/access-to-environment-variable-created-by-elasticsearchrefs-in-initcontainer/361407>\
**Category:** Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK)\
**Created:** [June 13, 2024, 12:33pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/access-to-environment-variable-created-by-elasticsearchrefs-in-initcontainer/361407 "2024-06-13T12:33:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hannibal](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/hannibal/32/135263_2.png) [@hannibal](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/hannibal)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2024, 12:33pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/access-to-environment-variable-created-by-elasticsearchrefs-in-initcontainer/361407/1 "2024-06-13T12:33:14Z")

</div>

Hi,

I'm using ECK to create elasticsearch + logstash.  
To being able to setup my index lifecycle policy, I need to run an initContainer on my logstash pod.

Inside my logstash pod I have access to the env environment variable create by elasticsearchRefs (like xxxxxxxxx\_ES\_HOSTS, xxxxxxxxxxx\_ES\_USER, etc....).

But nothing inside the initContainer.  
There is a way to enable that ?

Here my configuration:

```auto
apiVersion: logstash.k8s.elastic.co/v1alpha1
kind: Logstash
metadata:
  name: logstash
  namespace: test
spec:
  config:
    log.level: info
    pipeline.workers: 1
  count: 1
  elasticsearchRefs:
  - clusterName: elasticsearch-test
    name: elasticsearch-test
  pipelinesRef:
    secretName: logstash-pipelines-config
  podTemplate:
    spec:
      containers:
      - env:
        - name: PIPELINE_WORKERS
          value: "1"
        - name: LOGSTASH_JDBC_INPUT_SERVER
          valueFrom:
            configMapKeyRef:
              key: DbConnectionStringDataSource
              name: website-config
        - name: LOGSTASH_JDBC_INPUT_DATABASE
          valueFrom:
            configMapKeyRef:
              key: DbConnectionStringInitialCatalog
              name: website-config
        - name: LOGSTASH_JDBC_INPUT_USER
          value: sa
        - name: LOGSTASH_JDBC_INPUT_PASSWORD
          valueFrom:
            secretKeyRef:
              key: sa-password
              name: sqlserver-account
        - name: MONITORING_ENABLED
          value: "false"
        name: logstash
        volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /usr/share/logstash/sql
          name: logstash-sql-volume
        - mountPath: /usr/share/logstash/pipeline
          name: logstash-pipeline-volume
        - mountPath: /usr/share/logstash/jars
          name: jars-volume
      initContainers:
      - args:
        - -c
        - curl https://download.microsoft.com/download/4/D/C/4DCD85FA-0041-4D2E-8DD9-833C1873978C/sqljdbc_7.2.2.0_enu.tar.gz
          --output sqljdbc_7.2.2.0_enu.tar.gz && tar xzf sqljdbc_7.2.2.0_enu.tar.gz
          && mv sqljdbc_7.2/enu/mssql-jdbc-7.2.2.jre8.jar /data/mssql-jdbc.jar
        command:
        - /bin/sh
        name: download-jdbc-sqlserver
        volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /data
          name: jars-volume
      - args:
        - -c
        - bash /data/scripts/entrypoint.sh
        command:
        - /bin/sh
        name: apply-index-template-iml
        volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /data/ilm
          name: logstash-index-lifecycle-policy-volume
        - mountPath: /data/indexTemplate
          name: logstash-index-template-volume
        - mountPath: /data/scripts
          name: logstash-scripts-volume
      nodeSelector:
        kubernetes.io/os: linux
      volumes:
      - name: logstash-sql-volume
        secret:
          secretName: logstash-sql
      - name: logstash-pipeline-volume
        secret:
          secretName: logstash-pipeline
      - name: logstash-index-lifecycle-policy-volume
        secret:
          secretName: logstash-index-lifecycle-policy
      - name: logstash-index-template-volume
        secret:
          secretName: logstash-index-template
      - name: logstash-scripts-volume
        secret:
          secretName: logstash-scripts
  version: 8.13.1
  volumeClaimTemplates:
  - metadata:
      name: logstash-data
    spec:
      accessModes:
      - ReadWriteOnce
      resources:
        requests:
          storage: 2Gi
      storageClassName: no-replica
  - metadata:
      name: jars-volume
    spec:
      accessModes:
      - ReadWriteOnce
      resources:
        requests:
          storage: 50Mi
      storageClassName: no-replica

```

Thanks in advance for your help