Using a directory for home directories other than /home

[isoboroff]

Proposed change

Our setup uses /home for networked home directories. Is there a way to get tljh to put its users somewhere else?

(this might not be a feature request so much as a request for a pointer to the config option or the place in the source where home directories are defined)

Alternative options

Who would use this feature?

ME

(Optional): Suggest a solution

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[naclomi]

Howdy, I was also struggling with this (in my case because I wanted to put JupyterHub user homes on a specific networked file share) and this is what I found:

• For TLJH hubs specifically (as opposed to Kubernetes-based deployments), responsibility for new user creation ultimately trickles down past the authenticator plugin and to the function ensure_user() in tljh/user.py
• Specifically, it's hardcoded to create a new user using the low-level Linux useradd utility, and then chmod their home directory so nobody else can access it. Relevant code here: link
• Luckily, we can customize useradd's default behavior by editing the file /etc/default/useradd. Specifically, we can add a line to that file like this: HOME=___, replacing the ___ with our desired homes directory (no trailing slash). New Jupyter user homes will be placed there upon first-authentication.
  • ⚠️ NB: This will alter the location for new home directories for ALL new user accounts created on this server, not just JupyterHub users. If you need different new-user-creation behavior between JupyterHub and standard Linux utilities, you're going to need to screw with the source code.
• While we're mucking, by the way, we can also set up the default files that will be copied to all new user homes. Those live in the directory /etc/skel. You can clone a git repo into there if you want to avoid dealing with nbgitpuller or tljh-repo2user-dir.