PLUTO - Run a tutorial in the VRE

Tips and Tutorials \ PLUTO - Run a tutorial in the VRE

This tip explains the required settings to run a tutorial in the VRE from the Pluto portal.

Tools:

Difficulty: Easy
Type: Tip

Prerequisites : Access to the TREX platform

Some tutorial presented in the Pluto portal can be run directly in the CNES' VRE. The affected tutorials have a button "run in VRE" at the top of their Pluto sheet. When one clicks on that button, a new tab opens on their browser inviting them to enter their CNES credentials, so they can run the tutorial directly in the VRE, without having to install all the dependencies required by the tutorial.

But before one can use that functionality, some configuration might be required.

Configure the Proxy

If the tutorial requires accessing some data stored on the internet, one will need to configure the proxy. The complete documentation can be found there.

Create a custom kernel

Some tutorials require specific modules. The easiest way to install them is to create a custom kernel:

Create a virtual environment containing at least the module ipykernel
```
conda create -n <MY_KERNEL> ipykernel
conda activate <MY_KERNEL>
```

To add the required modules to the kernel, one can use one of the following command:

conda install <PACKAGE> <PACKAGE> <PACKAGE>
conda install <PACKAGE>=<VERSION>
conda install --file requirements.txt

Generate a kernel based on this virtual environment
```
ipython kernel install --user --name <MY_KERNEL>
```

Now, when you start a notebook, you have an option in the starting menu with the newly created kernel.

Using a temporary directory

When generating temporary files, one should use the local storage dedicated to temporary data. In the VRE, a temporary directory handled by slurm (the resource manager of TREX) is available with the environment variable $TMPDIR.

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