Role jupyterhub_rtc

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Summary

This role allows 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) ‘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.

Description

This role:

1. Installs the jupyter-collaboration extension for JupyterHub in the designated virtual environment (see below).
2. Adds configuration to the main JupyterLab configuration file to grant users rights to shared servers in accordance with the specified mode (see above)

Variables

• jupyterhub_rtc_share_all_users: Boolean. Whether to enable ‘all users mode’ (see above). Default: false.
• jupyterhub_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.
• jupyterhub_rtc_config_path: String. Location of the main JupyterHub config file. Default: /usr/local/etc/jupyter/jupyterhub_config.py.
• jupyterhub_rtc_user: String. Name of the shared user in ‘shared user’ mode. Default: shared.
• jupyterhub_rtc_group: String. Name of a group that the shared user will be added to. This may be necessary to grant the user access to JupyterHub resources. Default: jupyterhub.

See also

• Role jupyterhub
• Playbook jupyter_rtc

History

2025 Written by Dawa Ometto (Utrecht University)

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