FAQ
My user server shuts down while running some calculation
To save money, user’s servers are idle-culled when there is no activity recorded for at least 10 minutes. Besides user interactions, program output to the terminal counts as such an activity. So, be sure to make your background computation log something at least every couple of minutes. This should be enough to keep your server running.
I’m running out of disk space
Your home directory (/home/jovyan) is stored on a shared network volume. Unlike a local hard drive, it is not partitioned per user — all users on the same deployment share the underlying storage capacity.
What to do:
- Delete files you no longer need, especially large datasets or intermediate outputs.
- Move temporary or scratch data to
/tmp(which is cleared on server restart). - Use
du -sh ~/in a terminal to check how much space your home directory occupies. - If you still need more space, ask your course administrator.
👩🏫 Coaches: Monitor the storage account usage in the Azure portal. The
jupyterhub-homescontainer holds all user home directories. Individual user usage can be inspected via thejupyterhub-homes/<username>/path prefix in the storage browser.
What is the difference between /home/jovyan and /home/shared?
| Path | What it is | Writable? | Survives restart? |
|---|---|---|---|
/home/jovyan | Your personal home directory | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
/home/jovyan/shared (→ /home/shared) | Shared course materials | ❌ Read-only | ✅ Yes |
/tmp | Temporary scratch space | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
Your teacher uploads shared materials (datasets, starter notebooks) via the Azure storage account. You cannot write to the shared directory.
A notebook cell failed with a long error — what now?
Don’t be put off by the scary headline. Read the last line of the traceback — it tells you what actually went wrong, and often the headline (e.g. “FFmpeg is not properly installed”) is a red herring. The Troubleshooting page walks you through the four common patterns, which you can fix yourself, and what to send to ZI if you can’t.
Can other students see my files?
No. Each user’s home directory is isolated by subdirectory. Other students cannot access your /home/jovyan files. However, on collaboration (group) servers, all group members share the same home directory and can see each other’s files.
Getting help
👩🎓 Participants: For anything course-specific — access problems, missing materials, quota, group membership — ask your Coach or Course Owner first. They manage your course and can resolve most issues directly.
👩🏫 Owners / Coaches: For platform issues you cannot resolve yourself (new kernels/packages in the course image, deployment changes, storage upload guides, suspected outages), contact ZI Cloud at support@zi.uzh.ch.