[ENH] - Enable long running computations without requiring a browser window to be kept open

[Adam-D-Lewis]

Feature description

Currently long running computations require a browser window to be kept open for the duration of the computation. Some prototype work has been done to enable ‘background’ and ‘batch’ processes to be run on QHub.

Value and/or benefit

This feature would enhance this and make it easily accessible to scientists and engineers using the platform.

[Adam-D-Lewis]

Some of this discussion is contained in https://github.com/Quansight/qhub/issues/1098#issuecomment-1075704820 Also, there may be some overlap with https://github.com/Quansight/qhub/issues/1100

[viniciusdc]

Hi @Adam-D-Lewis, just out of curiosity could you provide an example of a long-running computation? (sorry for this strange question, just want to be sure I am on the same page).

About this,

Currently long running computations require a browser window to be kept open for the duration of the computation

have you experienced this? was there a problem when closing the window (haven't tried that, so that's why I am asking)

[Adam-D-Lewis]

Hey @viniciusdc, yeah, users are automatically logged out of jupyterhub a short while after closing their browser window. I think the amount of time is configurable, but isn't more than 15 minutes by default so for anything that takes longer than that, you need to keep your browser open. So something like the below script won't finish if you close your broswer window.

# sleep.py
import time
time.sleep(60*60)  # any long running computation
with open('myfile.txt', 'w') as f:
  f.write('my result')

python sleep.py

[iameskild]

I think we can close this now since we have a few possible solutions, namely Jupyter-Scheduler. @Adam-D-Lewis if you feel differently, feel free to reopen this issue.