JupyterHub

A JupyterHub service is provided for teaching Python courses on ALICE. This service is available to all UoL staff via their IT account.

Connecting to JupyterHub

Open a browser on any machine connected to the UoL network or VPN and enter the following URL: https://jupyterhub.rcs.le.ac.uk/

This will take you to the login page - enter your UoL username and password.

You will now see a server options page - this allows you to choose a jupyterlab container from the drop down list.

ALICE

  • Python 3.11.4: SciPy, Numpy, Matplotlib - This is a basic install including SciPy, Numpy, Matplotlib and all their dependencies.
  • Python 3.11.4: Minimal - A minimal Python install - just has very basic libraries suitable for a Python introduction course.
  • Python 3.11.4: UoL EOS Notebook - Based off the SciPy, Numpy, Matplotlib install, also has geospatial libraries, Pandas and git integration.

In most cases the SciPy, Numpy, Matplotlib server will be suitable (this is also the default)

Select an option from the drop down list and click "Start". Your Jupyter lab instance will launch, Python notebooks can be created using the "Python 3 (ipykernel)" option. Existing notebooks can be loaded from the file browser window to the left.

ALICE

Note that your ALICE home directory is accessible from JupyterHub (via the left panel). There is also a "teaching" directory available from here which contains course materials.

Teaching using JupyterHub

The JupyterHub service is intended for teaching on ALICE. Teaching materials can be made available to students when they log in via the "teaching" directory. Please contact RCS support if you would like to make material available to students using this directory.

If your course materials are instead available via git, there is the option to generate a URL which will take the student to JupyterHub, load the correct server and check out the course material from git automatically when entered into a browser - if you would like to use this feature, please contact RCS support.

Please let us know course dates if you are interested in using the JupyterHub service for teaching, please also check your course dates against the list of ALICE service days as JupyterHub will not be available at these times.

General use of JupyterHub

The JupyterHub service can be used for general development and testing of code, simple data analysis or self-directed teaching. Please do not run large memory or computationaly expensive codes via JupyterHub. These should be run directly on the cluster using Python or jupyterlab.