Public folder

We provide a folder named “public” among all Jupyter-Cloud users. After given special access you can upload datasets to it which others can view as read-only.

For the time being only upon request. Please send an email with your intentions to support@gwdg.de.

Probably not. Please consider using a version control system like git via our gitlab service. Consider that other users have only read-only access to the folder and datasets you provide. While they probably can run a notebook from a public folder, the functionality of the notebook might be impared.

After briefly discussing your intent we will make a configuration change to the service which will effect your notebook server next time you log into the service and start the notebook.

The changes are as follows: After logging in you will see a folder called “public” among your other folders. This folder is read-only and visible to *every* user on the service the same way. When you change into the folder you will see subfolders with numerical names. One of these is your write-able folder *inside* the public read-only folder. For other users this folder will be visible as well but remains is read-only.

For technical reasons this folder has to have this numerical name which is an attribute of your account (although seldom visible to users). It is comparable to the serial number of your passport. It is a technical information to identify your account but it is not sensitive or private information. When you start your notebook you will see this number also as part of the URL of your notebook. Note the number to identify your subfolder under the “public” folder.

The practical aspects of this setup are as follows: you can work within the /public/<number> folder just like you work with the rest of your data because (only) you have write-access to it. That is, you can create many subfolders, copy, rename and delete data in these folders and so forth. All changes you do are immediately visible to others. It basically is a shared folder. Copy your data into the subfolder, make changes as necessary and when you hand out instructions in your lectures etc. point the other users to that public/<number> folder and - depending on what your course material and tasks are - instruct them to copy the necessary parts from the public folder to their own user folder so that they can work on the data and material with write access. For users unfamiliar with the Terminal in the notebook it will be helpful to provide example commands on how to copy data.

Please note: this configuration change is permanent. You will keep access to this public folder for future use. If you adopt a naming scheme for your subfolders you can build a collection or library for different courses, topics and semesters, if that is applicable.

In the interest of everybody using this shared service, please keep your data organized and remove anything no longer in use.