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Configuration

Four environment variables. One required (REMOTE_LAB_URL), three optional timeouts. The pytest fixture and RemoteLabClient both consume them.

Four environment variables. One required (REMOTE_LAB_URL); three optional timeouts. The pytest fixture reads them at session setup; RemoteLabClient reads them at construction. Setting them in CI is exactly the same shape as setting them locally.

The variables

Read by RemoteLabClient and the remote_lab_client pytest fixture.

Variable Default Consumed at Effect
REMOTE_LAB_URL — (required) Fixture setup / client construction Base URL of the Remote Lab Manager. Accepts http://… or https://…; the client strips a trailing / before composing paths.
REMOTE_LAB_REQUEST_TIMEOUT 30 (seconds) Fixture setup Per-HTTP-request timeout for short operations (create session, status, heartbeat, release).
REMOTE_LAB_SESSION_TIMEOUT 600 (seconds) Fixture setup How long the client will wait for its session to become ACTIVE in the queue before raising TimeoutError.
REMOTE_LAB_ACQUISITION_TIMEOUT 600 (seconds) Fixture setup How long POST /lab may take before the HTTP request times out. Netlab can take minutes to bring up a topology; this is deliberately long.

Required: REMOTE_LAB_URL

RemoteLabClient falls back to os.getenv("REMOTE_LAB_URL") when no base_url is passed to its constructor and raises ValueError("base_url must be provided …") if both are missing.

The remote_lab_client pytest fixture reads the same variable and raises RuntimeError("REMOTE_LAB_URL not set. …") at fixture setup when it is unset. 

# On the test-runner host
export REMOTE_LAB_URL="http://lab.internal:8000"

Optional: the three timeout variables

The pytest fixture passes any of these that are set through to the client constructor as integer seconds. Unset variables fall back to the client’s defaults (30 / 600 / 600).

# Test runner
export REMOTE_LAB_REQUEST_TIMEOUT=60
export REMOTE_LAB_SESSION_TIMEOUT=1200
export REMOTE_LAB_ACQUISITION_TIMEOUT=1800

When to raise each:

Variable When to raise it
REMOTE_LAB_REQUEST_TIMEOUT Individual HTTP requests time out on a slow link.
REMOTE_LAB_SESSION_TIMEOUT Queue waits regularly exceed the default 600 s (multiple CI jobs sharing one server).
REMOTE_LAB_ACQUISITION_TIMEOUT Large topologies where netlab up takes more than 10 minutes.

Client and server session timeouts must agree

The server independently evicts stale sessions: _WAITING_SESSION_TIMEOUT is 600 s and _ACTIVE_SESSION_STALE is 300 s. If your client REMOTE_LAB_SESSION_TIMEOUT is longer than 600 s, the server will drop your waiting session before the client gives up — your CI sees a confusing timeout error. Coordinate with the operator before raising client-side timeouts past the server defaults.

Direct client use bypasses the fixture’s env-var handling

If you instantiate RemoteLabClient directly (e.g., from a helper script), the client defaults apply regardless of these env vars — pass the timeouts as keyword arguments instead. See the RemoteLabClient reference.

Not wired: REMOTE_LAB_TOKEN

The variable is not consumed by either the client or the server. Setting it has no effect; do not rely on it as an access boundary. The service has no HTTP authentication — see Security model.

See also

  • Pytest Fixtures — the consumer that drives these variables in test setup.
  • Python Client — the constructor arguments that mirror these variables and which take precedence when you instantiate the client directly.
  • CI quickstart — how the same variables wire into GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Jenkins pipelines.
  • Server-side configuration — the CLI flags and the one server env var (NEOPS_NETLAB_STREAM_OUTPUT).