Jupyter Lab

Podman will automatically create the necessary volume for your image if you do not specify a location.

Most guides recommend doing something like this:

podman container run -d \
    --name jupyter \
    -p 6000:8888 \
    -v jupyter-work:/home/jovyan/work:Z \
    jupyter/scipy-notebook

This is okay, but then we have to get the token from the terminal. You run podman logs jupyter, copy the string after token=, it is all quite clunky really.

What we can do is create our own token or disable the token by adding "start-notebook.sh --NotebookApp.token=''" after scipy-notebook.

If you want to create a token add --NotebookApp.token='my_token', replacing my_token with whatever you like. Much better than a random string of gibberish.

If systemd is managing the container, and we will be generating a systemd service file, we can auto update the container as well by adding a '--label io.containers.autoupdate={local,registry}'.

If you want to run JupyterLab, -e JUPYTER_ENABLE_LAB=yes.

In the example below, we are going to access Jupyter Notebooks from port 6000. The container internal port is 8888.

podman container run -d \
    --name jupyter \
    --label io.containers.autoupdate=registry \
    -p 6000:8888 \
    -e JUPYTER_ENABLE_LAB=yes \
    -v /home/user/jupyter:/home/jovyan/work:Z \
    docker.io/jupyter/scipy-notebook start-notebook.sh --NotebookApp.token=''

With the above command we create a container named "jupyter", accessible from http://localhost:6000. Files will be saved and accessible from the host at ~/jupyter. Using Jupyter’s scipy-notebook image from Docker.io. Podman will check docker.io for new images. Notebook token is disabled.

Check if the container is running properly

podman container ps

If there's a problem, run podman logs jupyter.

Generating systemd service file

If everything is working as intended, all that is left is to generate the systemd service file, enable it and see if it works.

If it does not already exist, create the systemd user directory in your home directory.

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user

Then generate the systemd service file.

podman generate systemd \
	--user \
	--new \
	--name jupyter \
	-f /home/user/.config/systemd/user/

This will create container-jupyter.service in ~/.config/systemd/user/. If you do not use --name you will get a service file named container-dg6464323fsdf34536...

After creating the service file, reload systemd.

Systemctl --user daemon-reload

Stop the jupyter container.

podman stop jupyter

Enable and start container-jupyter.service.

Systemctl --user enable --now container-jupyter.service

Check if everything worked

Systemctl --user status container-jupyter

podman container ps jupyter

If you want Jupyter notebook to be accessible when the user is not logged in, you will need to run

loginctl enable-linger user