Jupyter Notebooks for OpenShift

This repository contains software to make it easier to use Jupyter Notebooks on OpenShift.

This includes input source code for creating a minimal Jupyter notebook image using the Source-to-Image (S2I) build process. The image can be built in OpenShift, or separately using the s2i tool.

The minimal Jupyter notebook image can be deployed to create an empty Jupyter notebook workspace in OpenShift that you can work with. The same image, can also be used as a S2I builder to create customised Jupyter notebook images with additional Python packages installed, or notebook files preloaded.

Note: The images provided by this repository were originally called minimal-notebook, scipy-notebook and tensorflow-notebook. The names has to be changed because the resulting image stream name would conflict with similar images from Jupyter Project in certain circumstances.

Why not use Jupyter Project images?

The Jupyter Project provides a number of images for notebooks on Docker Hub. These are:

• base-notebook
• r-notebook
• minimal-notebook
• scipy-notebook
• tensorflow-notebook
• datascience-notebook
• pyspark-notebook
• all-spark-notebook

The GitHub repository used to create these is:

• https://github.com/jupyter/docker-stacks

There are two problems with using these images with OpenShift.

The first is that the images will not run out of the box on an OpenShift installation. This is because they have not been designed properly to work with an assigned user ID without additional configuration. One can use them, but you need to edit the deployment so that the container is run with an extra supplemental group with gid of 100.

The second problem is the size of these images. The base-notebook image is close to 3GB in size. This means they cannot be used on OpenShift environments, such as OpenShift Online, which cap image/container filesystem size at 3GB. The s2i-minimal-notebook image created from this repository in contrast is about 1GB in size. Part of the issue with the size of the Jupyter Project images appears to be due to the use of an ubuntu base image and Anaconda Python distribution.

For most use cases, the variants of the above images for just Python, which are provided here will work as substitutes. The images here also have the added benefit of being able to be used as Source-to-Image (S2I) builders so you can easily incorporate notebook files and required packages into a derived new image.

Building the Minimal Notebook

To build the minimal Jupyter notebook run the command:

oc create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jupyter-on-openshift/jupyter-notebooks/master/images.json

This will create a build configuration in your OpenShift project to build the minimal Jupyter notebook image using the Python 3.5 S2I builder. You can watch the progress of the build by running:

oc logs --follow bc/s2i-minimal-notebook

A tagged image s2i-minimal-notebook:3.5 should be created in your project.

Once the build is complete, further builds will run to create s2i-scipy-notebook:3.5 and s2i-tensorflow-notebook:3.5. These are custom notebook images which include additional Python packages. The set of packages installed with these mirrors the images of the same name provided by the Jupyter project team.

Deploying the Minimal Notebook

To deploy the minimal Jupyter notebook image run the following commands:

oc new-app s2i-minimal-notebook:3.5 --name my-notebook \
    --env JUPYTER_NOTEBOOK_PASSWORD=mypassword

The JUPYTER_NOTEBOOK_PASSWORD environment variable will allow you to access the notebook instance with a known password.

Deployment should be quick, but you can monitor progress if necessary by running:

oc rollout status dc/my-notebook

Because the notebook instance is not exposed to the public network by default, you will need to expose it. To do this, and ensure that access is over a secure connection run:

oc create route edge my-notebook --service my-notebook \
    --insecure-policy Redirect

To see the hostname which is assigned to the notebook instance, run:

oc get route/my-notebook

Access the hostname shown using your browser and enter the password you used above.

To delete the notebook instance when done, run:

oc delete all --selector app=my-notebook

Creating Custom Notebook Images

To create custom notebooks images, you can use the s2i-minimal-notebook:3.5 image as a S2I builder.

To replicate what loading the images.json file did in creating builds for s2i-scipy-notebook, you could have instead run:

oc new-build --name my-scipy-notebook \
  --image-stream s2i-minimal-notebook:3.5 \
  --code https://github.com/jupyter-on-openshift/jupyter-notebooks \
  --context-dir scipy-notebook

If any build of a custom image fails because the default memory limit on builds in your OpenShift cluster is too small, increase the limit by running:

oc patch bc/my-scipy-notebook \
  --patch '{"spec":{"resources":{"limits":{"memory":"1Gi"}}}}'

and start a new build by running:

oc start-build bc/my-scipy-notebook

If using the custom notebook image with JupyterHub running in OpenShift, you also need to set the image lookup policy on the image stream created.

oc set image-lookup is/my-scipy-notebook

This is necessary so that the image stream reference in the pod definition created by JupyterHub will be able to resolve the name to that of the image stream.

When creating a custom notebook image, the directory in the Git repository the S2I build is run against can contain a requirements.txt file listing the Python package to be installed in the custom notebook image. Any other files in the directory will also be copied into the image. When the notebook instance is started from the image, those files will then be present in your workspace.

As an additional example, if you want to create a custom notebook image which includes the notebooks from Jake Vanderplas' book found at:

• https://github.com/jakevdp/PythonDataScienceHandbook

run:

oc new-build --name jakevdp-notebook \
  --image-stream s2i-minimal-notebook:3.5 \
  --code https://github.com/jakevdp/PythonDataScienceHandbook

Enabling JupyterLab Interface

The Jupyter notebook images created from this repository do not by default come with the JupyterLab extension enabled. This is because enabling the JupyterLab extension triggers additional build steps which require over 2Gi in memory to run. OpenShift environments such as OpenShift Online have a cap on how much memory can be allocated to a build, of 2Gi. Attempting to build the images with the JupyterLab extension enabled will cause an out of memory error.

If you are using Minishift, where there is no cap, or an OpenShift environment which has a larger cap than 2Gi of memory available to pods, you can add the JupyterLab extension for the minimal notebook by running:

oc patch bc/s2i-minimal-notebook --patch '{"spec":{"resources":{"limits":{"memory":"3Gi"}}}}'
oc set env bc/s2i-minimal-notebook JUPYTER_INSTALL_LAB=true

This increases the memory allowed for the build and sets the JUPYTER_INSTALL_LAB environment variable to have the JupyterLab extension added when the image is built. To trigger a new build run:

oc start-build s2i-minimal-notebook

This only adds the JupyterLab extension to the image, you still need to enable it for a deployed notebook. This can be done by setting the JUPYTER_ENABLE_LAB environment variable.

oc set env dc/jakevdp-notebook JUPYTER_ENABLE_LAB=true

Using the OpenShift Web Console

To make it easier to build and deploy Jupyter Notebooks, templates are provided. To load the templates run:

oc create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jupyter-on-openshift/jupyter-notebooks/master/templates.json

The templates are:

• notebook-deployer - Template for deploying a Jupyter Notebook image.
• notebook-builder - Template for building a custom Jupyter Notebook image using Source-to-Image (S2I) against a hosted Git repository. Python packages listed in the requirements.txt file of the Git repository will be installed and any files, including notebook images, will be copied into the image. The image can then be deployed using notebook-deployer.
• notebook-quickstart Template for building and deploying a custom Jupyter Notebook image. This effectively combines notebook-builder and notebook-deployer.
• notebook-workspace - Template for deploying a Jupyter Notebook image which also attaches a persistent volume, and copies any installed Python packages and notebooks into the persistent volume. Any work done on the notebooks or to install additional Python packages will survive a restart of the Jupyter Notebook environment. A webdav interface is also enabled to allow remote mounting of the persistent volume.

The templates can be used from the command line or from the web console. To find the templates in the web console, click on the Add to Project menu in the top navigation bar and then click Select from Project. Filter on jupyter if necessary.