Can’t make first slice using Portal interface

[Nicholas Bastin]

The docs (https://learn.fabric-testbed.net/knowledge-base/portal-slice-builder-user-guide/) lead me to believe that I should see a “Create Slice” button on the “Experiments” tab. However, all I get is a nice warning box that says it can’t find my slice, sending me to a bunch of places to learn how to make one (screenshot attached).

I can hopefully just make one using the API, so this isn’t a pressing issue for me.

[Paul Ruth]

Try the JupyterHub tab/link.  After it opens, click the “start_here”  notebook in the “jupyter_examples”  folder.  Then click the “Hello, FABRIC” example notebook.

After you get that running, try all the more advanced networking-focused notebooks.

Paul

[Nicholas Bastin]

So I tried that, now I’m getting:

SliceManagerException: (invalid_grant) invalid refresh token

I thought perhaps this was because apparently I’m not a member of projects I create by default, so I added myself as a member, but that didn’t make a difference (or at least, I’m not sure if it would – this might be something that has to sync up somehow, I have no idea…).

[Paul Ruth]

The token should have been created when you authenticated against cilogon when logging into JupyterHub. By default only one token is live in a JupyterLab session and you can’t run multiple notebooks concurrently (there are work arounds but by default it won’t work).

Try hitting the “restart kernel” button in the JupyterNotebook (or select Kernel->Restart Kernel from the menu bar).   This should re-read the token in the current notebook.  If that doesn’t work you might have a corrupted token and will need to log out/in to re-authenticate and get a new token.

[Nicholas Bastin]

I may have tried to hack around this in a bad way…I uploaded tokens that I generated from the portal. Things have changed, possibly not for the better – now I’m getting:


/opt/conda/lib/python3.9/site-packages/fabrictestbed_extensions/fablib/resources.py in update(self)
423
424 """
--> 425 return_status, topology = fablib.get_slice_manager().resources()
426 if return_status != Status.OK:
427 raise Exception("Failed to get advertised_topology: {}, {}".format(return_status, topology))
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'resources'


It did however let me make a slice…

[Nicholas Bastin]

That may have been optimistic – it returned me a slice object and I can introspect it a very little bit, but the sm_slice attribute is None, so nothing works.

[Paul Ruth]

It should work as long as your FABRIC_TOKEN_LOCATION env var is pointed at a valid token before you import the fablib library.   By default, when you log into the JupyterHub, a new token will be put at ~/.tokens.json and FABRIC_TOKEN_LOCATION will point there.

You can grab another token from the portal you can use it in another notebook by setting the FABRIC_TOKEN_LOCATION env var in the top cell of the other notebook.  Also, if you want to install the fablib library somewhere else (like your laptop) you will need to explicitly set the token location to wherever you put the token.

We tried to make this really transparent to the user but I think we will need to add an explicit call to set the token in a notebook to make it more clear.

 

[Nicholas Bastin]

I actually did this – the commented out lines in the os.environ section of the notebook had the token location, so I changed mine to os.environ['FABRIC_TOKEN_LOCATION']=os.environ['HOME']+'/portal-tokens.json', but it’s pretty unhappy about this. Changing it back to .tokens.json doesn’t generate a new file either… I tried logging all the way out of both jhub and the portal, but it didn’t change anything.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by Nicholas Bastin.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by Nicholas Bastin.

[Paul Ruth]

Also, the example notebooks are automatically pulled from the following link when you start your JupyterHub container.

https://github.com/fabric-testbed/jupyter-examples

If you want to fully reset your JupyterHub container you can “rm -rf ~/work/jupyter-examples”, then stop/start your container (File->Hub Control Panel), then log out/in.

Restarting the container with a missing ~/work/jupyter-examples dir will re-pull the github repo.  Logging out/in will get a new token.

Of course, you can do all that manually by using git commands and pulling a new token from the portal.

[Paul Ruth]

Ah… you need to think about a Jupyter notebook like a live Python app that is that is in a debugger.  Even if you go back the the top cell, all the values remain. If you want to reset all the vars and env vars (i.e. if you comment out the token path), then you need to restart the notebook kernel.  Otherwise residual values will be in subsequent runs.

Try setting all the tokens values, then restarting the notebook’s kernel, then start from the top.

 

[Nicholas Bastin]

We use jupyter a lot, so I’m familiar with resetting the kernel and such.. 🙂

That being said, it’s working now – I had to go to the hub control panel and manually kill my server. Possibly you have to wait some time period after logging out before logging back in to get it to refresh otherwise?

[Paul Ruth]

I wonder if this has to do with the project you just created.  We just added some permission limiting to the projects and yours has the default (i.e. minimal permissions).

I just added you to the “FABRIC Tutorial” project.  Try using that one and see if that works.

Paul

[Yaxue Guo]

Hi Nick,

Thanks for pointing out this usability issue! Your opinion is insightful and really matters to us.  I’ve updated the user guide for now to include screenshots and guidance for users with no project/ no slice. In the callout message you mentioned saying “We couldn’t find your slice. Please create slices from Portal or JupyterHub …” The links to portal slice builder and JupyterHub are clickable and will lead you to corresponding pages. I’ll also update this callout message to include an obvious “Create Slice” button soon as a request added to this Github issue, then update the guide article accordingly.

Yaxue

[Nicholas Bastin]

The portal builder is clickable to documentation, but you cannot follow those instructions, as I noted above, if you don’t already have at least one slice. Your new documentation does not work if you have never created a slice – even in your screenshots you have a slice, which is a requirement for the create slice button to appear and work.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by Nicholas Bastin.

[Yaxue Guo]

This screenshot has been added to the guide article. And clicking the link of “Portal” in the red square will lead you to the slice builder page(same effect as clicking on “Create Slice” button in the other case for users with existing slices). This UI will be improved soon by adding buttons “Create Slice in Portal” and “Create Slice in JupyterHub” (Github ticket). But for now could you please click the link and try slice builder? Thanks!

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