You can add your own environment variables in the runtime environment, so that all pipeline steps have access to the same set of external files. A typical

example would be a shared secret that you want to pass everywhere.

To get a list of all available runtimes execute:

```

Choose the runtime that you want to modify and get its yaml representation:

Under the `runtimeScheduler` block you can add an additional element with names `userEnvVars` that follows the same syntax as [secret/environment variables](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/configuration/secret/#using-secrets-as-environment-variables)

{% highlight yaml %}

{% raw %}

runtimeScheduler:

type: KubernetesPod

imagePullPolicy: Always

cluster:

namespace: codefresh

clusterProvider:

accountId: 5c1658d1736122ee1114c842

selector: docker-desktop

serviceAccount: codefresh-engine

envVars:

LOGGER_LEVEL: debug

NODE_ENV: kubernetes

NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED: '0'

DISABLE_WORKSPACE_CACHE: 'true'

NO_EXT_MONITOR: 'true'

userEnvVars:

- name: SPECIAL_LEVEL_KEY

valueFrom:

secretKeyRef:

name: dev-db-secret

key: username

{% endraw %}

{% endhighlight %}

Update your runtime environment with the [patch command](https://codefresh-io.github.io/cli/operate-on-resources/patch/):

- Global environment variables in the Codefresh runner - [documentation]({{site.baseurl}}/docs/administration/codefresh-runner/#custom-global-environment-variables)