Filesystem and user directory

Your notebook server is a linux “virtual machine” with its own filesystem. You are not on a shared server; you are on your own private server.

The easiest way to move files in and out of your home directory is via the JupyterLab web interface. Drag a file into the file browser to upload, and right-click to download back out. You can also open a terminal via the JupyterLab launcher and use this to ssh / scp / ftp to remote systems. However, you can’t ssh in!

Your Home Directory

Your username is jovyan, and your home directory is /home/jovyan. This is the same for all users, but no one else can see or access the files in your home directory.

/home/jovyan is a persistant network-attached drive. Any files you put there will be there when you log out and log back into the JupyterHub.

The /home/jovyan space is typically limited to 10 GB. Consequently, your home directory is intended only for notebooks, analysis scripts, and small datasets (< 1 GB). It is not an appropriate place to store large datasets.

Modify your bash profile

You may edit your bash profile at ~/.bash_profile. However, be careful because some edits may have unanticipated consequences. For example, if you change your shell such that it can no longer launch a Jupyter Server, then your session will fail to start. This may happen if you change your default shell to something like zsh.

If you change your ~/.bash_profile and something suddenly breaks, try reverting the change to this file. If your session can no longer start, email support as this file may need to be manually edited or deleted.

The shared Directory

All users have a directory called shared in their home directory. This is a readonly directory - anybody on the hub can access and read from the shared directory. The hub administrator may choose to distribute shared materials via this directory. The shared directory is not intended as a way for hub users to share data with each other.

The /tmp Directory

Any directory outside of /home/jovyan is emphemeral on Cloud-hosted JupyterHubs. This means if you add data or scripts under a writeable directory like /tmp/myfile.txt it will not be there when you log out and log back in.

Nevertheless, /tmp is a convenient location for storing data temporarily because it is a fast SSD drive. The space available depends on your server but will generally be much larger than /home/jovyan (50-100s of GB).