Create an R Kernel for a Jupyter Notebook
- Simon Alexander
Goal: Detail how to update an R Conda environment so it can be used as a kernel within ARCC’s Jupyter service.
What is Jupyter and What is a Kernel?
Jupyter is a large umbrella project that covers many different software offerings and tools, including the popular Jupyter Notebook and JupyterLab web-based notebook authoring and editing applications.
Kernels are programming language specific processes that run independently and interact with the Jupyter Applications and their user interfaces.
They can be considered as the computational engine for notebooks.
The kernel process is a standalone process that runs in the background and executes the code that you write in your notebooks. The kernel process is responsible for running the code and returning the results to the frontend.
ARCC provides the Jupyter with OnDemand workshop.
General Process
The general process involves updating the Conda environment to include kernel related packages, and then configuring the kernel spec to allow it to be picked up by the Jupyter service.
Activate you R Conda Environment.
Start R.
Install the
IRkernelpackage.Exit R.
Deactivate your Conda environment.
Copy the created
kernelspecinto your home~/.local/share/jupyter/kernels/folder.Update the
kernel.json.
Install the IRkernel package
[]$ module load miniconda3/24.3.0
[]$ conda activate /project/<project-name>/software/conda-envs/r_4.3.3_env/
(/project/<project-name>/software/conda-envs/r_4.3.3_env) []$ R
> install.packages('IRkernel')
...
also installing the dependencies ‘fastmap’, ‘fansi’, ‘utf8’, ‘htmltools’, ‘pillar’, ‘base64enc’, ‘repr’, ‘evaluate’, ‘IRdisplay’, ‘pbdZMQ’, ‘crayon’, ‘jsonlite’, ‘uuid’, ‘digest’
...
* DONE (IRkernel)Created kernelspec folder
[]$ ls /project/<project-name>/software/conda-envs/r_4.3.3_env/lib/R/library/IRkernel/kernelspec/
kernel.js kernel.json logo-64x64.png logo-svg.svg[salexan5@mblog2 ~]$ cat /project/<project-name>/software/conda-envs/r_4.3.3_env/lib/R/library/IRkernel/kernelspec/kernel.json
{"argv": ["R", "--slave", "-e", "IRkernel::main()", "--args", "{connection_file}"],
"display_name":"R",
"language":"R"
}Configure Your Jupyter Environment
Start Jupyter
Within a Notebook
Within a cell try: