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Frequently asked questions

Why is the NEBARI_KUBECONFIG file in /tmp?​

Nebari regenerates this file on every run. This means it will be removed by the operating system during its cleanup process, but running the qhub deploy command again as a Nebari administrator will update/create a NEBARI_KUBECONFIG file for you.

How are Nebari conda user environments created? Who creates them?​

The short answer: there are currently two ways of creating environments, as we are in the process of migrating Nebari to conda-store, and so which way depends on your use-case.

The longer answer:

  • For global environments, you can specify the environment in qhub_config.yml, and it will be made available for all users and services (e.g., CDSDashboards).
  • By comparison, creating the environments through conda-store will provide more granular control over certain settings and permissions.

As Nebari and conda-store mature, the intent is to migrate exclusively to conda-store for environment creation and management.

What if I need to install package X, and it's not available in the environment?​

You can add the package to the qhub_config.yml. If you don't have access to the deployment repo, you'll need to contact your Nebari administrator to include the required package.

What's included in the conda environment if I want to use Dask?​

There are drop-in replacements for distributed, dask, and dask-gateway with the correct pinned versions available via the QHub Dask metapackage. Example: qhub-dask==||QHUB_VERSION||.

How can I install a package locally? Will this package be available to Dask workers?​

⚠️caution

We strongly recommend installing packages by adding them through the conda-store UI. If you're developing a package and need to install the package through pip, conda, or similar, the following approach may be used.

If you are using a setuptools package, you can install it into your local user environment by:

pip install --no-build-isolation --user -e .

If you're using a flit package, you can install it through the following command:

flit install -s

It's important to note that packages installed this way aren't available to the Dask workers. See our Dask tutorial for more information.

Can I modify the .bashrc file on Nebari?​

Regular Nebari users do not have write permissions to modify the .bashrc file.

Nebari automatically creates and manages .bashrc and .profile, so if the intent of using the .bashrc file is to populate environment variables in bash scripts or similar, you can source the file in any scripts you create by including the following line in your scripts:

source ~/.bashrc

You can use .bashrc on Nebari, but it's important to note that by default Nebari sources .bash_profile. You should double-check to source the .bashrc inside of the .bash_profile. Also, note that if you set environment variables in this way, these variables aren't available inside the notebooks.

What if I can't see the active conda environment in the terminal?​

Set the changeps1 value in the conda config:

conda config --set changeps1 true

The conda config is located in the /home/{user}/.condarc file. You can change the conda config with a text editor (for example: nano, which is included in Nebari by default), and the changes will be applied on saving the file.

How do I clean up or delete the conda-store pod, if I need to?​

You may find that the pods hosting your environment get full over time, prompting you to clear them out. To delete old builds of your environment on conda-store, click the "delete" button in the conda-store UI.