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jupyterhub/docs/source/spawners.md
2016-11-12 17:17:00 -08:00

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# Spawners
A [Spawner][] starts each single-user notebook server.
The Spawner represents an abstract interface to a process,
and a custom Spawner needs to be able to take three actions:
- start the process
- poll whether the process is still running
- stop the process
## Examples
Custom Spawners for JupyterHub can be found on the [JupyterHub wiki](https://github.com/jupyterhub/jupyterhub/wiki/Spawners).
Some examples include:
- [DockerSpawner](https://github.com/jupyterhub/dockerspawner) for spawning user servers in Docker containers
* `dockerspawner.DockerSpawner` for spawning identical Docker containers for
each users
* `dockerspawner.SystemUserSpawner` for spawning Docker containers with an
environment and home directory for each users
* both `DockerSpawner` and `SystemUserSpawner` also work with Docker Swarm for
launching containers on remote machines
- [SudoSpawner](https://github.com/jupyterhub/sudospawner) enables JupyterHub to
run without being root, by spawning an intermediate process via `sudo`
- [BatchSpawner](https://github.com/jupyterhub/batchspawner) for spawning remote
servers using batch systems
- [RemoteSpawner](https://github.com/zonca/remotespawner) to spawn notebooks
and a remote server and tunnel the port via SSH
## Spawner control methods
### Spawner.start
`Spawner.start` should start the single-user server for a single user.
Information about the user can be retrieved from `self.user`,
an object encapsulating the user's name, authentication, and server info.
When `Spawner.start` returns, it should have stored the IP and port
of the single-user server in `self.user.server`.
**NOTE:** When writing coroutines, *never* `yield` in between a database change and a commit.
Most `Spawner.start` functions will look similar to this example:
```python
def start(self):
self.user.server.ip = 'localhost' # or other host or IP address, as seen by the Hub
self.user.server.port = 1234 # port selected somehow
self.db.commit() # always commit before yield, if modifying db values
yield self._actually_start_server_somehow()
```
When `Spawner.start` returns, the single-user server process should actually be running,
not just requested. JupyterHub can handle `Spawner.start` being very slow
(such as PBS-style batch queues, or instantiating whole AWS instances)
via relaxing the `Spawner.start_timeout` config value.
### Spawner.poll
`Spawner.poll` should check if the spawner is still running.
It should return `None` if it is still running,
and an integer exit status, otherwise.
For the local process case, `Spawner.poll` uses `os.kill(PID, 0)`
to check if the local process is still running.
### Spawner.stop
`Spawner.stop` should stop the process. It must be a tornado coroutine, which should return when the process has finished exiting.
## Spawner state
JupyterHub should be able to stop and restart without tearing down
single-user notebook servers. To do this task, a Spawner may need to persist
some information that can be restored later.
A JSON-able dictionary of state can be used to store persisted information.
Unlike start, stop, and poll methods, the state methods must not be coroutines.
For the single-process case, the Spawner state is only the process ID of the server:
```python
def get_state(self):
"""get the current state"""
state = super().get_state()
if self.pid:
state['pid'] = self.pid
return state
def load_state(self, state):
"""load state from the database"""
super().load_state(state)
if 'pid' in state:
self.pid = state['pid']
def clear_state(self):
"""clear any state (called after shutdown)"""
super().clear_state()
self.pid = 0
```
## Spawner options form
(new in 0.4)
Some deployments may want to offer options to users to influence how their servers are started.
This may include cluster-based deployments, where users specify what resources should be available,
or docker-based deployments where users can select from a list of base images.
This feature is enabled by setting `Spawner.options_form`, which is an HTML form snippet
inserted unmodified into the spawn form.
If the `Spawner.options_form` is defined, when a user tries to start their server, they will be directed to a form page, like this:
![spawn-form](images/spawn-form.png)
If `Spawner.options_form` is undefined, the user's server is spawned directly, and no spawn page is rendered.
See [this example](https://github.com/jupyterhub/jupyterhub/blob/master/examples/spawn-form/jupyterhub_config.py) for a form that allows custom CLI args for the local spawner.
### `Spawner.options_from_form`
Options from this form will always be a dictionary of lists of strings, e.g.:
```python
{
'integer': ['5'],
'text': ['some text'],
'select': ['a', 'b'],
}
```
When `formdata` arrives, it is passed through `Spawner.options_from_form(formdata)`,
which is a method to turn the form data into the correct structure.
This method must return a dictionary, and is meant to interpret the lists-of-strings into the correct types. For example, the `options_from_form` for the above form would look like:
```python
def options_from_form(self, formdata):
options = {}
options['integer'] = int(formdata['integer'][0]) # single integer value
options['text'] = formdata['text'][0] # single string value
options['select'] = formdata['select'] # list already correct
options['notinform'] = 'extra info' # not in the form at all
return options
```
which would return:
```python
{
'integer': 5,
'text': 'some text',
'select': ['a', 'b'],
'notinform': 'extra info',
}
```
When `Spawner.start` is called, this dictionary is accessible as `self.user_options`.
[Spawner]: https://github.com/jupyterhub/jupyterhub/blob/master/jupyterhub/spawner.py
## Writing a custom spawner
If you are interested in building a custom spawner, you can read [this tutorial](http://jupyterhub-tutorial.readthedocs.io/en/latest/spawners.html).
## Spawners, resource limits, and guarantees (Optional)
Some spawners of the single-user notebook servers allow setting limits or
guarantees on resources, such as CPU and memory. To provide a consistent
experience for sysadmins and users, we provide a standard way to set and
discover these resource limits and guarantees, such as for memory and CPU. For
the limits and guarantees to be useful, the spawner must implement support for
them.
### Memory Limits & Guarantees
`c.Spawner.mem_limit`: A **limit** specifies the *maximum amount of memory*
that may be allocated, though there is no promise that the maximum amount will
be available. In supported spawners, you can set `c.Spawner.mem_limit` to
limit the total amount of memory that a single-user notebook server can
allocate. Attempting to use more memory than this limit will cause errors. The
single-user notebook server can discover its own memory limit by looking at
the environment variable `MEM_LIMIT`, which is specified in absolute bytes.
`c.Spawner.mem_guarantee`: Sometimes, a **guarantee** of a *minumum amount of
memory* is desirable. In this case, you can set `c.Spawner.mem_guarantee` to
to provide a guarantee that at minimum this much memory will always be
available for the single-user notebook server to use. The environment variable
`MEM_GUARANTEE` will also be set in the single-user notebook server.
The spawner's underlying system or cluster is responsible for enforcing these
limits and providing these guarantees. If these values are set to `None`, no
limits or guarantees are provided, and no environment values are set.
### CPU Limits & Guarantees
`c.Spawner.cpu_limit`: In supported spawners, you can set
`c.Spawner.cpu_limit` to limit the total number of cpu-cores that a
single-user notebook server can use. These can be fractional - `0.5` means 50%
of one CPU core, `4.0` is 4 cpu-cores, etc. This value is also set in the
single-user notebook server's environment variable `CPU_LIMIT`. The limit does
not claim that you will be able to use all the CPU up to your limit as other
higher priority applications might be taking up CPU.
`c.Spawner.cpu_guarantee`: You can set `c.Spawner.cpu_guarantee` to provide a
guarantee for CPU usage. The environment variable `CPU_GUARANTEE` will be set
in the single-user notebook server when a guarantee is being provided.
The spawner's underlying system or cluster is responsible for enforcing these
limits and providing these guarantees. If these values are set to `None`, no
limits or guarantees are provided, and no environment values are set.