Modify our custom JupyterHub image

Modify our custom JupyterHub image#

The 2i2c hubs use a custom hub image that is defined in the helm-charts directory of the infrastructure repository.

The `hub` image#

This custom hub image is built on top of the jupyterhub/k8s-hub Docker image and configured based on the needs of 2i2c hubs. This allows adding and configuring other packages like the jupyterhub-configurator or using specific versions of the spawner and authenticator. More information about this custom image can be found in the Dockerfile itself.

The experimental hub images#

In addition to the hub image, there are also experimental hub images, that are defined alongside the main hub image in the helm-charts directory of the infrastructure repository, through individual requirements.txt files, named after the experiment that’s being performed.

The experimental hub images and the main hub image are quite similar. They are based off the same Dockerfile, but use different requirements.txt files, because their primary goal is to be used to test changes like new packages, newer package versions, or even unreleased or unmerged versions of them. They are used to deploy such changes just to one or a few specific communities, without having to worry about the instabilities they can generate for other communities.

Note

Both the 2i2c custom hub and the hub-experimental images live at Quay.io.

When to roll out the changes in the experimental images to `hub`#

Important

Our current policy states that a change in a hub experimental image must be rolled out into hub, within 4 weeks, otherwise it should be removed. Any issues identified within these 4 weeks, must be fixed it until it’s good enough to deploy to all hubs.

The workflow is the following:

        flowchart TD
  build_hub_experimental[fa:fa-camera-retro Build a new `hub-experimental` image]-->configure_hub_with_experiment[Configure the hub of at least one community to use the new image]
  configure_hub_with_experiment-->deploy_hub[fa:fa-rocket Deploy]
  -- Watch for one week to see how it goes! ---
  deploy_hub --> condition{{Runs for one week without needing any fixes?}}
  condition -- Yes --- roll_out[Roll out changes from `hub-experimental` into the `hub` image]
  condition -- No --- fix[fa:fa-ban Fix issues]
  fix --> condition
  roll_out --> deploy_everywhere[fa:fa-rocket Deploy hub image everywhere]
  -- More testing for hubs that are configured differently ---
  deploy_everywhere --> end_condition[fa:fa-exclamation `hub-experimental` image is the same as `hub`]

How to create a new hub experimental image#

You will first need to create a new .txt file with a name relevant for the experiment, let’s say new-experiment-requirements.txt.
Then, chartpress must be instructed to create a new docker image using the new-experiment-requirements.txt To do this, edit the chartpress.yaml file located at the root of the helm-chartes/images directory to add another image under the basehub chart:

new-experiment:
  imageName: quay.io/2i2c/new-experiment
  buildArgs:
    REQUIREMENTS_FILE: "new-experiment-requirements.txt"
  contextPath: "images/hub"
  dockerfilePath: images/hub/Dockerfile

Go to https://quay.io/new/ and create a new public repository using your 2i2c organizational account. Name it the same with the suffix of the name set under imageName from chartpress.yaml. In this example is new-experiment.

How to install an unreleased version of a package in an experimental hub image#

To install an unreleased package, we will need to install directly from GitHub and not from PyPI:

Identify the package and commit you wish to install into the hub image

Important

Specify a full commit hash after @, not a branch name. This way, our builds are more reproducible!
```
https://github.com/jupyterhub/kubespawner@def501f1d60b8e5629745acb0bcc45b151b1decc
```
Update the .txt file of this specific experiment, let’s say new-experiment-requirements.txt, to add this package and commit, prefixed by a git+ on a new row
```
git+https://github.com/jupyterhub/kubespawner@def501f1d60b8e5629745acb0bcc45b151b1decc
```

Commit the changes

git add helm-charts/images/hub/new-experiment-requirements.txt
git commit

Note

The commit SHA with be used to generate the image tag.

How to build and push a new version of the available hub images#

Rebuild the Docker image and push it to the Quay.io registry

Your @2i2c address should give you access to push to the Quay.io registry where the hub image lives, but make sure you are logged into quay.io container registry with the right credentials and these creds are configured to have access to https://quay.io/repository/2i2c/pilot-hub. Please contact someone at 2i2c for access if this is not the case.
```
docker login quay.io
```
See also

Checkout the Getting Started with Quay.io docs for more info.
Make sure you have jupyterhub/chartpress installed.
```
pip install chartpress
```
This package is also listed under dev-requirements.txt, so it should be present if you’ve installed the dev dependencies.
Make sure you are in the helm-charts directory, where the chartpress.yaml is located:
```
cd ./helm-charts
```
Run chartpress to build the image, push it to the registry and update the basehub helm chart to use the updated image tag
```
chartpress --push
```
Note

If you are on macOs with M1, you need to run chartpress with docker buildx under the hood and specify which platform to use, i.e. amd64[1].
```
chartpress --push --builder docker-buildx --platform linux/amd64
```
If building and pushing the hub image, then commit the changes made by chartpress to helm-charts/basehub/values.yaml, but discard the changes made to helm-charts/basehub/Chart.yaml as the last may cause problems with the daskhub dependency mechanism.
```
git add helm-charts/basehub/values.yaml
git commit
```
If building and pushing any of the experimental images, then discard the changes to both helm-charts/basehub/values.yaml and helm-charts/basehub/Chart.yaml, because we only want to deploy this image to particular hubs

How to configure a hub to use an experimental new image#

You will need to put a config similar to the one below in your hub configuration file:

hub:
  image:
    name: quay.io/2i2c/new-experiment
    tag: "0.0.1-0.dev.git.8663.h049aa2c2"

Important

The image tag of the of the jupyterhub/k8s-hub in the Dockerfile must match the dependent JupyterHub Helm chart’s version as declared in basehub/Chart.yaml.