Force named server and reroute user landing page

[pierrepo]

Upon authentication, a user lands to a page where he can select the image he would like to load: If he wants to run another container (environment), from the Jupyter Lab server, he has to click on File -> Hub Control Panel to eventually reach this page:

User has then to provide a name (whatever it is) to run another environment.

We find the use of the "Server Options" page and the "Hub Control Panel" page a bit confusing.

Would it be possible/pertinent to implement the following strategy?

• Upon authentication, user lands on the "Hub Control Panel" page.

• Without choosing any name himself, he clicks on a link to load a new server. All servers are named but the name is automatic.

• He chooses the kind of environment he wants to run ("Server Options" page). The name of the server is the name of the env itself. For instance, the name would be plasmabio-template-python-master for the env plasmabio/template-python:master.

By using only named servers, this will homogenize the name of user servers as seen in the admin panel, and also their management. For instance:

foo/plasmabio-template-python-master
foo/plasmabio-template-bash-master
bar/plasmabio-template-bash-master
foo/plasmabio-template-r-master
toto/plasmabio-template-rstudio-master

Using automatically names for named servers will prevent user:

• to chose arbitrary stupid or useless names
• to load the same env twice, since a named server cannot (or shouldn't) have the same name.

This will also ease the way how users manage their own envs.

[jtpio]

It sounds like it should be possible.

This would also simplify the admin panel, as there won't be any need to the "Image" column anymore if the name of the image is encoded in the name of the server.

Also the list of servers would appear on the landing page under "Named Server" by default. Although the page could be modified to display servers differently.

However if this is transparent then the number of named servers allowed per user will have to be increased. Otherwise the user will have to go back to the home page and delete previous named servers manually.

Also at the moment the TLJH idle culler doesn't seem to be culling named servers (yet), see: https://github.com/jupyterhub/the-littlest-jupyterhub/issues/547.

[pierrepo]

You understood our thoughts very well. :+1: As for now, a total of 3 (named) servers should be sufficient.

Also at the moment the TLJH idle culler doesn't seem to be culling named servers (yet), see: jupyterhub/the-littlest-jupyterhub#547.

Thanks for pointing to this issue (that I totally forgot about). For now, is not very important but it would be nice to solve this issue at some point.