The Littlest JupyterHub

There is a nice easy distribution of JupyterHub that is a great way to get started on a single-server computer.

These instructions take you through setting up ContainDS Dashboards on a standard install of The Littlest JupyterHub (TLJH).

First of all, set up your TLJH - on the cloud, in your own server, or just on a laptop in a VM.

Python environments

Note that you may have two different Python environments: the ‘hub’ environment and the ‘user’ environment. The hub environment is where JupyterHub itself is running, serving the main web framework for login and managing Jupyter servers on your JupyterHub website. The user environment is where individual’s Jupyter notebooks are running.

For example, in The Littlest JupyterHub, the two environments are usually located in /opt/tljh/hub (for the hub environment) and /opt/tljh/user (for the user environment).

Installing cdsdashboards

Install the cdsdashboards package in the hub environment:

sudo -E /opt/tljh/hub/bin/python3 -m pip install cdsdashboards
sudo -E /opt/tljh/hub/bin/python3 -m pip install --upgrade jupyterhub-traefik-proxy

The last line is just an upgrade to a package used by TLJH that causes problems if you have an old version.

Also install cdsdashboards in the user environment, including extra dependencies:

sudo -E /opt/tljh/user/bin/python3 -m pip install cdsdashboards[user]

Installing Presentation Frameworks

In the user environment you must also install any ‘presentation packages’ - e.g. Voilà, which is a user-friendly and safe way to display Jupyter notebooks to non-technical users:

sudo -E /opt/tljh/user/bin/python3 -m pip install voila

Also install Streamlit and/or Plotly Dash if you are planning to use those frameworks, e.g.:

sudo -E /opt/tljh/user/bin/python3 -m pip install streamlit
sudo -E /opt/tljh/user/bin/python3 -m pip install dash

The key package for the hub environment is cdsdashboards itself; for the user environment the crucial package is jhsingle-native-proxy as well as any ‘presentation package’ - Voilà, which is a user-friendly and safe way to display Jupyter notebooks to non-technical users.

Changes to jupyterhub_config.py

Change or add the following in your JupyterHub config.

You can copy the settings above into a new file called /opt/tljh/config/jupyterhub_config.d/cdsdashboards_config.py, although ideally you would set allow_named_servers and spawner_class through tljh-config (but that doesn’t matter if you’re just trying it out).

# Replacement for UserCreatingSpawner (a simple extension of SystemdSpawner) - The Littlest JupyterHub's default spawner
c.JupyterHub.spawner_class = 'cdsdashboards.hubextension.spawners.variableusercreating.VariableUserCreatingSpawner'

c.SystemdSpawner.unit_name_template = 'jupyter-{USERNAME}{DASHSERVERNAME}'

c.JupyterHub.allow_named_servers = True

c.CDSDashboardsConfig.builder_class = 'cdsdashboards.builder.processbuilder.ProcessBuilder'

from cdsdashboards.app import CDS_TEMPLATE_PATHS
from cdsdashboards.hubextension import cds_extra_handlers

c.JupyterHub.template_paths = CDS_TEMPLATE_PATHS
c.JupyterHub.extra_handlers = cds_extra_handlers

The allow_named_servers option is a standard JupyterHub option where every user gets more than just their single ‘My Server’ Jupyter environment. They can add extra environments by specifying a name. ContainDS Dashboards makes use of this by running the presentation servers as named servers - they are really servers just like the original Jupyter notebook servers, but running Voilà or another system instead.

Instead of the original UserCreatingSpawner, you actually need to use a slightly enhanced version of that spawner called - that is set by assigning to c.JupyterHub.spawner_class as above. At the time of writing, the default SystemdSpawner does not work correctly with named servers, and a workaround is provided through VariableUserCreatingSpawner and a new unit_name_template, as seen above.

Reload the TLJH servers:

sudo tljh-config reload

If you find that Dashboards end up giving a 404 not found error (and named servers created on the Home page also do) please see TLJH named servers show 404 not found.

Options

Extra options to control behavior of Dashboards are available - see Customization.