In my previous post I talked about how to build some Docker containers to run a deep learning-focused¹ JupyterHub instance.

It’s nice for several reasons if the JupyterHub server brings itself up when the system starts. Here’s how to do that—an adaptation of this Stack Overflow post.

Create a file at /etc/systemd/system/docker-jupyterhub.service and put the following text into the file.

[Unit]
Description=JupyterHub container
Requires=docker.service
After=docker.service

[Service]
Restart=always
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/docker-compose start -f /path/to/GPU-Jupyterhub/docker-compose.yml --project-directory /path/to/GPU-Jupyterhub/
ExecStop=/usr/local/bin/docker-compose stop -f /path/to/GPU-Jupyterhub/docker-compose.yml --project-directory /path/to/GPU-Jupyterhub/

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Once that file has been created, issue the following command:

sudo systemctl enable docker-jupyterhub.service

Now the JupyterHub server should start when the host computer boots and you won’t have to login to start it manually.

It was a little tricky to find that --project-directory flag, and turns out it’s important to put the start and stop before any other arguments.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯