Some help ref which token to pass for accessing Notebook API running inside JuptyerHub/JupyterLab about jupyterhub-deploy-docker

[jtyberg]

So basically, you're trying to access the API of individual notebook servers through JupyterHub, which is authenticating users via Gitlab.

I'm going to have to defer to @minrk on this one.

[Analect]

@jtyberg yes.
The gitlab authentication is akin to the default github one, where I'm also supplying a userlist specifying whether a user has hub admin rights.

For context, as per issue 25, I'm looking to build in some flexibility in terms of what image is used to spin up a server. I would then like to be able to programmatically access (via the Notebook API), a user's given server.

Perhaps this belongs in a separate issue ... but your usage of docker volumes to persist data between different instances of a users' server is novel. I was wondering if you explored a way of pre-seeding these with just the source code from a repo .. which could then be pushed back with git to a VCS ... so a user has benefit of persistence, but also version-control.

[minrk]

JupyterHub replaces the authentication mechanism, so the token-auth introduced in notebook master won't work (yet) with JupyterHub. I'll work on that after we push out the 0.7 release (likely tomorrow).

[Analect]

OK. Thanks @minrk for clarifying. Happy to test as and when you get time to implement.

[jtyberg]

Thanks, @minrk.

@Analect regarding pre-seeding the Docker volumes with git repos, there's an example of using a custom entry point script here to clone a git repo at container startup. Pushing back to the git repo will require the notebook user is authorized to do so. I've not tried this.

[Analect]

@jtyberg Thanks for that pointer.
Rather than requiring all users to have knowledge of git ... in order to push some/all changes back to the repo via a terminal, for instance, perhaps some variant of this gist extension from @minrk could present a user with a dialogue box from within jupyterlab for a user to add a commit msg and then push any changed file(s) collectively.

[jtyberg]

@Analect Agree with passing the git auth responsibility to the user. Either they enter creds or upload an SSH key.