Pre-pull a content repository

nbgitpuller is often recommended as the approach for pre-populating a user’s file-system with a particular Git repository. However, in cases where the source repository is known a priori to be fixed for all users, we can use Kubernetes init containers to pre-provision the file-system with the contents of this repository on startup.

The benefits of using an init container to perform this operation are:

1. Failures in loading or merging of the Git repository do not stop users from accessing their servers

2. Alternative launch methods to nbgitpuller URLs now provision the file system with the necessary content.

The jupyterhub-gitpuller-init image is an example of an init container that fulfils this purpose. It requires a volume to be mounted onto /home/jovyan, and the necesasry inputs to be defined:

TARGET_PATH

Destination to clone Git repository.

SOURCE_REPO

URL of the Git repository to clone.

SOURCE_BRANCH

Branch of the Git repository to clone.

Defining the init container

The following configuration for the jupyterhub-gitpuller-init init container can be added to the jupyterhub.singleuser configuration for a particular cluster:

jupyterhub:
  singleuser:
    initContainers:
      - name: jupyterhub-gitpuller-init
        image: public.ecr.aws/nasa-veda/jupyterhub-gitpuller-init:97eb45f9d23b128aff810e45911857d5cffd05c2
        env:
          - name: TARGET_PATH
            value: <YOUR_CLONE_PATH>
          - name: SOURCE_REPO
            value: <YOUR_GIT_REPO>
          - name: SOURCE_BRANCH
            value: <YOUR_GIT_BRANCH>
        volumeMounts:
          - name: home
            mountPath: /home/jovyan
            subPath: "{escaped_username}"
        securityContext:
          runAsUser: 1000
          runAsGroup: 1000

This init container will run for all user profiles.