Set environment variable for process spawned by Apache webserver

This is how I did it on my django site, where the path is set in the apache file (as MY_PATH). Notice that I copy it into the os.environ variable.

import os, sys, django.core.handlers.wsgi
_application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler()

def application(environ, start_response):

    path = environ['MY_PATH']
    if path not in sys.path:
        sys.path.append(path)


    os.environ['MY_PATH'] = environ['MY_PATH']
    from django.conf import settings
    settings.DEBUG = True

    return _application(environ, start_response)

Since I copied the environment variable to the os.environ, I can now use it (for example) in the settings file. Note that I have set all the os.environ variables before including the settings. In the settings I get it like so:

import os
PATH = os.environ['MY_PATH']

Since you are using lighttpd fast-cgi, just set it using bin-environment within the lighttpd settings.

## Start an FastCGI server for php (needs the php5-cgi package)
fastcgi.server    = ( ".php" => 
    ((
            "bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi",
            "socket" => "/tmp/php.socket",
            "max-procs" => 2,
            "idle-timeout" => 20,

            "bin-environment" => ( 
                    "PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN" => "4",
                    "PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS" => "10000",

            ),

            "bin-copy-environment" => (
                    "PATH", "SHELL", "USER"
            ),
            "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable"
    ))
)