Persistence in SciServer Containers
Your Compute containers are designed to be ephemeral. This means that while you have a powerful environment to work in, most changes made to the system (the “root” filesystem) are reset every time you restart or launch a new container.
To keep your work, configurations, and tools, you must use your Personal Storage Folders.
Personal Storage Folders
If you want personal data or configurations to survive a restart, or be accessible in multiple containers at a time, they must live in your Personal Storage Folders.
Anything outside the ~/workspace/ mounted folders is reset on every new
container and every container restart. To maintain a consistent personalized
workflow, you must place your configuration files in your personal storage
folders. These are always available on new containers:
~/workspace/Storage/$SCISERVER_USER_NAME/persistent/~/workspace/Temporary/$SCISERVER_USER_NAME/scratch/
Automating your environment: The .bashrc file
Since the root filesystem resets, you can use a .bashrc file in your
persistent storage to automatically load tools, environment variables, or SSH
keys upon login:
~/workspace/Storage/$SCISERVER_USER/persistent/.bashrc
The system automatically executes this file every time a container starts, allowing you to make your environment feel permanent. See the Shell Automation for more details on this.
Persistence Recipes
Depending on what you need to keep, follow the relevant guide below:
I want to persist… |
Guide |
Goal |
|---|---|---|
The Automation Tool |
Learn how to manage the |
|
Python Libraries |
Avoid reinstalling packages every session. |
|
SSH Keys & Access |
Keep your SSH keys and Git (or similar) configs without re-linking. |