in hierarchal workflows, pegasus-plan is invoked via PegasusLite that does some of the environment setup of what Pegasus to use. As part of that PEGASUS_HOME is set in the job environment and pegasus-db-admin is invoked.

however, currently looking at logs , pegasus-db-admin does get confused

2020.05.28 14:15:11.712 PDT: [INFO] event.pegasus.code.generation dax.id diamond-0 (4.982 seconds) - FINISHED
2020.05.28 14:15:11.713 PDT: [DEBUG] Executing /lfs1/scratch/vahi/software/install/pegasus/pegasus-5.0.0dev/bin/pegasus-d
b-admin update -t master -c /scitech/home/bamboo/028-dynamic-hierarchy/work/bamboo/pegasus/local-hierarchy/run0001/00/00/./
inner.000/pegasus.6374431241413874430.properties
2020.05.28 14:15:12.346 PDT: [ERROR] 2020-05-28 14:15:12,345:ERROR:Pegasus.db.admin.commands(116): /tmp/pegasus.u5qM9Xcdq/
pegasus-5.0.0dev/bin/pegasus-version: line 9: /tmp/pegasus.u5qM9Xcdq/pegasus-5.0.0dev/share/pegasus/common.sh: No such file
or directory

[bamboo@bamboo run0001]$ more pegasus-plan_ID0000002.pre.err.000 | grep PEGASUS_
"PEGASUS_BIN_DIR": "/lfs1/scratch/vahi/software/install/pegasus/pegasus-5.0.0dev/bin"
"PEGASUS_CONF_DIR": "/lfs1/scratch/vahi/software/install/pegasus/pegasus-5.0.0dev/etc"
"PEGASUS_JAVA_DIR": "/lfs1/scratch/vahi/software/install/pegasus/pegasus-5.0.0dev/share/pegasus/java"
"PEGASUS_METRICS": "true"
"PEGASUS_MULTIPART_DIR": "/scitech/home/bamboo/028-dynamic-hierarchy/work/bamboo/pegasus/local-hierarchy/run0001/.pegasus.mulitpart.d"
"PEGASUS_PERL_DIR":"/lfs1/scratch/vahi/software/install/pegasus/pegasus-5.0.0dev/lib64/pegasus/perl"
"PEGASUS_PYTHONPATH_SET": "1" "PEGASUS_PYTHON_DIR":"/lfs1/scratch/vahi/software/install/pegasus/pegasus5.0.0dev/lib64/python3.6/site-packages" "PEGASUS_PYTHON_EXTERNALS_DIR":"/lfs1/scratch/vahi/software/install/pegasus/pegasus-5.0.0dev/lib64/pegasus/externals/python" "PEGASUS_SCHEMA_DIR":"/lfs1/scratch/vahi/software/install/pegasus/pegasus-5.0.0dev/share/pegasus/schema" "PEGASUS_SHARE_DIR":"/lfs1/scratch/vahi/software/install/pegasus/pegasus-5.0.0dev/share/pegasus"

In addition, pegasus-python-wrapper always sets PEGASUS_HOME before pegasus-db-admin is invoked.