HPC Desktop does not start, HOME not defined

[psuter80]

I just cloned this repo and ran the ./hpcts start command for the first time. ood is running and i can start jobs and run an interactive jupyter notebook session, bu tthe HPC Desktop fails to start.

the output.log shows this:

Setting VNC password...
Error: no HOME environment variable
Starting VNC server...
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
Cleaning up...
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.

in the jupyter notebook session, when i start a shell, the $HOME variable is also not set.