I’m running photon in a Kubernetes cluster using a custom Helm chart. To keep the required persistent volume size as small as possible, I want to avoid allocating permanent storage just for the temporary download of the Planet (or Region) file.

My idea is to use an init-container that downloads and unpacks the data file at startup. For this to work cleanly, it would be very helpful to have a dedicated environment variable that defines the temporary download path. The init-container could then place the file in that directory before Photon starts.

Motivation / Use Case:

• Reduce required persistent volume size in Kubernetes

• Allow the main Photon container to start with a minimal runtime volume

• Clean separation between temporary data (init-container) and runtime data (photon)

Request:
Would it be possible to introduce an environment variable (e.g. PHOTON_TEMP_DOWNLOAD_PATH) that specifies where the container downloads the Planet/Region file before import/startup?

This would make Kubernetes/Helm deployments significantly easier and would avoid workarounds involving fixed paths in the container image.

This might be only interesting for photon-container with DISABLED updates.