How to make VS Code recognize the environment variables of the SSH remote Windows host?

Question

I have two machines:

A host machine (Windows 11) running VS Code
A Hyper-V guest VM (Windows 11): OpenSSH Server installed, running VS Code Server with a Python project pythonWebApp

I'd like to ssh the guest by VS Code's SSH Remote extension and debug the pythonWebApp project remotely.

Current behavior is that the SSH connection succeeds, but environment variables differ - for example, PATH in the guest machine has the Python paths.

The following is the Windows Terminal outputs in the guest VM:

PS C:\Users\kusha> $env:PATH
C:\Users\kusha\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python313\Scripts\;C:\Users\kusha\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python313\;C:\Users\kusha\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Launcher\;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\WINDOWS\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\WINDOWS\System32\OpenSSH\;C:\Users\kusha\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Launcher\;C:\Users\kusha\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps;

PS: I added these Python paths to system variable PATH manually.

PATH in ssh session lacks these Python paths.

The following is the Terminal Window outputs in VS Code:

PS C:\Users\kusha\pl-python\pythonWebApp> $env:PATH
c:\Users\kusha\.vscode-server\cli\servers\Stable-cb0c47c0cfaad0757385834bd89d410c78a856c0\server\bin\remote-cli;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\WINDOWS\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\WINDOWS\System32\OpenSSH\;C:\Users\kusha\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps;;c:\Users\kusha\.vscode-server\extensions\ms-python.debugpy-2025.10.0-win32-x64\bundled\scripts\noConfigScripts;c:\Users\kusha\.vscode-server\data\User\globalStorage\github.copilot-chat\debugCommand

Apparently, due to the lack of Python environment variables in the ssh session, VS Code cannot perform any Python related operation.

PS: using a pure ssh session (i.e. not through VS Code) has a similar problem.

Question: how can I make the ssh session use the same environment variables as the guest? Alternatively, is there a way to automatically set environment variables when ssh connect?

Thanks very much.

chansey · Accepted Answer · 2025-07-19 18:42:31Z

0

A partial answer to my own question:

This Hyper-V guest VM had two accounts - a Microsoft account (kusha) and a local account (Chansey). A strange observation was that even though the local account was used by default to log into the desktop, only the Microsoft account's username appeared under C:\Users (i.e., C:\Users\kusha).

I created a brand-new VM with Windows 11 IoT LTSC and ensured it didn’t use a Microsoft account (meaning the system only had a local account). This resolved the issue.

So, it’s reasonable to suspect it was a Windows account-related problem. However, tonight I rebooted the old guest VM and found the issue no longer existed in the old guest VM.

Thus, the root cause still remains unclear (perhaps a reboot was required after installing OpenSSH Server).

edited Jul 19 at 18:42

answered Jul 16 at 20:58

chansey

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