Admin user login opening home directory of user created by jupyterhub

[falconair]

Bug description

Logging in as the admin user joe displays home directory of jupyter-joe rather than joe. Opening the terminal confirms that the working directory is /home/jupyter-joe rather than /home/joe

Expected behaviour

The admin user, passed in as part of the install command refers to an existing user joe. This user already had jupyterlab installed with many notebooks. In order to open up the server to other users, I installed jupyterhub and now logging in as joe doesn't show his home directory, therefore any of this files.

I would expected to log in as joe and see his existing directories. I would NOT expect to log in joe and see home directory belonging to jupyter-joe.

Actual behaviour

Logging in as joe takes m to jupyter-joe's home directory

How to reproduce

Iinstall TLJH according to instructions:
curl -L https://tljh.jupyter.org/bootstrap.py | sudo -E python3 - --admin joe

After a few minutes, log in as joe

Your personal set up

the-littlest-jupyterhub

• OS:
  Ubuntu 22.04

Full environment

_libgcc_mutex             0.1                 conda_forge    conda-forge
_openmp_mutex             4.5                       1_gnu    conda-forge
aiofiles                  22.1.0                   pypi_0    pypi
aiosqlite                 0.19.0                   pypi_0    pypi
alembic                   1.11.1                   pypi_0    pypi
anyio                     3.7.0                    pypi_0    pypi
argon2-cffi               21.3.0                   pypi_0    pypi
argon2-cffi-bindings      21.2.0                   pypi_0    pypi
arrow                     1.2.3                    pypi_0    pypi
asttokens                 2.2.1                    pypi_0    pypi
async-generator           1.10                     pypi_0    pypi
attrs                     23.1.0                   pypi_0    pypi
babel                     2.12.1                   pypi_0    pypi
backcall                  0.2.0                    pypi_0    pypi
beautifulsoup4            4.12.2                   pypi_0    pypi
bleach                    6.0.0                    pypi_0    pypi
brotlipy                  0.7.0           py39h3811e60_1001    conda-forge
bzip2                     1.0.8                h7f98852_4    conda-forge
c-ares                    1.17.2               h7f98852_0    conda-forge
ca-certificates           2023.5.7             hbcca054_0    conda-forge
certifi                   2023.5.7           pyhd8ed1ab_0    conda-forge
certipy                   0.1.3                    pypi_0    pypi
cffi                      1.14.6           py39h4bc2ebd_1    conda-forge
chardet                   4.0.0            py39hf3d152e_1    conda-forge
charset-normalizer        2.0.0              pyhd8ed1ab_0    conda-forge
colorama                  0.4.4              pyh9f0ad1d_0    conda-forge
comm                      0.1.3                    pypi_0    pypi
conda                     4.10.3           py39hf3d152e_2    conda-forge
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exceptiongroup            1.1.1                    pypi_0    pypi
executing                 1.2.0                    pypi_0    pypi
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fqdn                      1.5.1                    pypi_0    pypi
greenlet                  2.0.2                    pypi_0    pypi
icu                       68.1                 h58526e2_0    conda-forge
idna                      3.1                pyhd3deb0d_0    conda-forge
importlib-metadata        6.6.0                    pypi_0    pypi
ipykernel                 6.23.1                   pypi_0    pypi
ipython                   8.13.2                   pypi_0    pypi
ipython-genutils          0.2.0                    pypi_0    pypi
ipywidgets                7.7.5                    pypi_0    pypi
isoduration               20.11.0                  pypi_0    pypi
jedi                      0.18.2                   pypi_0    pypi
jinja2                    3.1.2                    pypi_0    pypi
json5                     0.9.14                   pypi_0    pypi
jsonpointer               2.3                      pypi_0    pypi
jsonschema                4.17.3                   pypi_0    pypi
jupyter-client            8.2.0                    pypi_0    pypi
jupyter-core              5.3.0                    pypi_0    pypi
jupyter-events            0.6.3                    pypi_0    pypi
jupyter-resource-usage    0.6.4                    pypi_0    pypi
jupyter-server            1.24.0                   pypi_0    pypi
jupyter-server-fileid     0.9.0                    pypi_0    pypi
jupyter-server-ydoc       0.8.0                    pypi_0    pypi
jupyter-telemetry         0.1.0                    pypi_0    pypi
jupyter-ydoc              0.2.4                    pypi_0    pypi
jupyterhub                1.5.1                    pypi_0    pypi
jupyterlab                3.6.4                    pypi_0    pypi
jupyterlab-pygments       0.2.2                    pypi_0    pypi
jupyterlab-server         2.22.1                   pypi_0    pypi
jupyterlab-widgets        1.1.4                    pypi_0    pypi
krb5                      1.19.2               hcc1bbae_2    conda-forge
ld_impl_linux-64          2.36.1               hea4e1c9_2    conda-forge
libarchive                3.5.2                hccf745f_1    conda-forge
libcurl                   7.79.1               h2574ce0_1    conda-forge
libedit                   3.1.20191231         he28a2e2_2    conda-forge
libev                     4.33                 h516909a_1    conda-forge
libffi                    3.4.2                h9c3ff4c_4    conda-forge
libgcc-ng                 12.2.0              h65d4601_19    conda-forge
libgomp                   12.2.0              h65d4601_19    conda-forge
libiconv                  1.16                 h516909a_0    conda-forge
libnghttp2                1.43.0               h812cca2_1    conda-forge
libsolv                   0.7.19               h780b84a_5    conda-forge
libssh2                   1.10.0               ha56f1ee_2    conda-forge
libstdcxx-ng              11.2.0              he4da1e4_11    conda-forge
libxml2                   2.9.12               h72842e0_0    conda-forge
libzlib                   1.2.11            h36c2ea0_1013    conda-forge
lz4-c                     1.9.3                h9c3ff4c_1    conda-forge
lzo                       2.10              h516909a_1000    conda-forge
mako                      1.2.4                    pypi_0    pypi
mamba                     0.16.0           py39h951de11_0    conda-forge
markupsafe                2.1.2                    pypi_0    pypi
matplotlib-inline         0.1.6                    pypi_0    pypi
mistune                   2.0.5                    pypi_0    pypi
nbclassic                 1.0.0                    pypi_0    pypi
nbclient                  0.8.0                    pypi_0    pypi
nbconvert                 7.4.0                    pypi_0    pypi
nbformat                  5.9.0                    pypi_0    pypi
nbgitpuller               1.1.1                    pypi_0    pypi
ncurses                   6.2                  h58526e2_4    conda-forge
nest-asyncio              1.5.6                    pypi_0    pypi
notebook                  6.5.4                    pypi_0    pypi
notebook-shim             0.2.3                    pypi_0    pypi
nteract-on-jupyter        2.1.3                    pypi_0    pypi
oauthlib                  3.2.2                    pypi_0    pypi
openssl                   1.1.1u               hd590300_0    conda-forge
packaging                 23.1                     pypi_0    pypi
pamela                    1.1.0                    pypi_0    pypi
pandocfilters             1.5.0                    pypi_0    pypi
parso                     0.8.3                    pypi_0    pypi
pexpect                   4.8.0                    pypi_0    pypi
pickleshare               0.7.5                    pypi_0    pypi
pip                       21.3               pyhd8ed1ab_0    conda-forge
platformdirs              3.5.1                    pypi_0    pypi
prometheus-client         0.17.0                   pypi_0    pypi
prompt-toolkit            3.0.38                   pypi_0    pypi
psutil                    5.9.5                    pypi_0    pypi
ptyprocess                0.7.0                    pypi_0    pypi
pure-eval                 0.2.2                    pypi_0    pypi
pycosat                   0.6.3           py39h3811e60_1006    conda-forge
pycparser                 2.20               pyh9f0ad1d_2    conda-forge
pygments                  2.15.1                   pypi_0    pypi
pyopenssl                 21.0.0             pyhd8ed1ab_0    conda-forge
pyrsistent                0.19.3                   pypi_0    pypi
pysocks                   1.7.1            py39hf3d152e_3    conda-forge
python                    3.9.7           hb7a2778_3_cpython    conda-forge
python-dateutil           2.8.2                    pypi_0    pypi
python-json-logger        2.0.7                    pypi_0    pypi
python_abi                3.9                      2_cp39    conda-forge
pyyaml                    6.0                      pypi_0    pypi
pyzmq                     25.1.0                   pypi_0    pypi
readline                  8.1                  h46c0cb4_0    conda-forge
reproc                    14.2.3               h7f98852_0    conda-forge
reproc-cpp                14.2.3               h9c3ff4c_0    conda-forge
requests                  2.31.0                   pypi_0    pypi
rfc3339-validator         0.1.4                    pypi_0    pypi
rfc3986-validator         0.1.1                    pypi_0    pypi
ruamel-yaml               0.17.31                  pypi_0    pypi
ruamel-yaml-clib          0.2.7                    pypi_0    pypi
ruamel_yaml               0.15.80         py39h3811e60_1004    conda-forge
send2trash                1.8.2                    pypi_0    pypi
setuptools                58.2.0           py39hf3d152e_0    conda-forge
six                       1.16.0             pyh6c4a22f_0    conda-forge
sniffio                   1.3.0                    pypi_0    pypi
soupsieve                 2.4.1                    pypi_0    pypi
sqlalchemy                1.4.48                   pypi_0    pypi
sqlite                    3.36.0               h9cd32fc_2    conda-forge
stack-data                0.6.2                    pypi_0    pypi
terminado                 0.17.1                   pypi_0    pypi
tinycss2                  1.2.1                    pypi_0    pypi
tk                        8.6.11               h27826a3_1    conda-forge
tomli                     2.0.1                    pypi_0    pypi
tornado                   6.3.2                    pypi_0    pypi
tqdm                      4.62.3             pyhd8ed1ab_0    conda-forge
traitlets                 5.9.0                    pypi_0    pypi
typing-extensions         4.6.3                    pypi_0    pypi
tzdata                    2021c                he74cb21_0    conda-forge
uri-template              1.2.0                    pypi_0    pypi
urllib3                   1.26.7             pyhd8ed1ab_0    conda-forge
wcwidth                   0.2.6                    pypi_0    pypi
webcolors                 1.13                     pypi_0    pypi
webencodings              0.5.1                    pypi_0    pypi
websocket-client          1.5.2                    pypi_0    pypi
wheel                     0.37.0             pyhd8ed1ab_1    conda-forge
widgetsnbextension        3.6.4                    pypi_0    pypi
xz                        5.2.5                h516909a_1    conda-forge
y-py                      0.5.9                    pypi_0    pypi
yaml                      0.2.5                h516909a_0    conda-forge
ypy-websocket             0.8.2                    pypi_0    pypi
zipp                      3.15.0                   pypi_0    pypi
zlib                      1.2.11            h36c2ea0_1013    conda-forge
zstd                      1.5.0                ha95c52a_0    conda-forge

Configuration

# jupyterhub_config.py

Everything is default, I made no changes. the jupyter_server_config.py has no uncommented lines

Logs

[welcome]

Thank you for opening your first issue in this project! Engagement like this is essential for open source projects! 🤗

If you haven't done so already, check out Jupyter's Code of Conduct. Also, please try to follow the issue template as it helps other other community members to contribute more effectively.

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Welcome to the Jupyter community! 🎉

[MridulS]

This user already had jupyterlab installed with many notebooks. In order to open up the server to other users, I installed jupyterhub and now logging in as joe doesn't show his home directory, therefore any of this files.

I'm not sure if using the littlest jupyterhub would be right way for this. You can set up a vanilla jupyterhub with much more customization and control how it is setup. The littlest JupyterHub distribution by default has jupyter-{username} as system users https://tljh.jupyter.org/en/latest/topic/security.html#system-user-accounts, now if this bit should be admin customizable or not that's a different discussion.

[consideRatio]

I think I align with how @MridulS is reasoning here, but I've also run into this broken expectation in the past so I'd say it would be good if docs conveyed this better.

I wouldn't be comfortable suggesting or defaulting use of tljh to possibly directly influence and overlap with normal users on a machine. If a machine has the accounts root, docker, database-admin, joe etc, and an JupyterHub authenticator is configured - then the usernames on github overlaps with system usernames in a way that can be very wierd. All this complexity is avoided by prefixing jupyter- on the TLJH created system usernames, and I don't see a way to avoid doing that without introducing more risk than its worth.

[gabrielecoppi]

@consideRatio any possibility to give the user the option to drop the jupyter- prefix? I am currently using TLJH for my lab and it creates always confusion in the users having two users. At the moment I modified the code before installing and hardcoded removing the prefix. I am pretty relaxed in terms of security, since the hub is accessible only with a VPN