Playbook jupyter_rtc

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Summary

This playbooks adds Real-time Collaboration functionality to an existing JupyterHub instance. This allows users to login to a single JupyterLab instance on the Hub and simultaneously edit documents.

Two modes are supported:

• (Recommended, Default) ‘Shared user’ mode: a special user shared is added to the Hub. All users on the Hub can open shared’s JupyterLab server, and edit collaboratively on the server. All users can also start shared’s server, if it is not running already
  • In this mode, users also have the rights to share their own server with other users at will. However, as of September 2022, JupyterHub does not yet have a UI to handle sharing of servers. The functionality is only available in the API. However, it is already activated by this role for when the UI becaomes available. In this case, this role will allow users to either use the shared server, or share their own server.
• (Warning) ‘All users’ mode: all users get access to each other user’s JupyterLab instance (although they do no have the rights to start others’ servers if they are not already running). This means all users get access to potentially personal information in users’ homedirectories. For this reason, this mode is only recommended on fully trusted instances.

When using the playbook in the recommended ‘shared user’ mode, you might want to configure your Catalog Item such that the ‘Access’ button points to the URL required to launch the shared user’s server: https://==REVERSE_PROXY==/hub/spawn/shared

Variables

• jupyter_rtc_share_all_users: Boolean. Whether to enable ‘all users mode’ (see above). Default: false.
• jupyter_rtc_venv: String. Location of the virtual environment in which the target JupyterHub is installed. Can also be set to the magic value system to use the system python installation, instead of a venv. Default: /usr/local/jupyterhub.
• jupyter_rtc_config_path: String. Location of the main JupyterHub config file. Default: /usr/local/etc/jupyter/jupyterhub_config.py.

See also

• Playbook jupyterhub
• Role jupyterhub_rtc

History

2025 Written by Dawa Ometto (Utrecht University)

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