Users can get "stuck" inside RStudio interface

[batpad]

We got this from a user last week:

"I do not use R, but accidentaly started an Rstudio through https://hub.openveda.cloud/. Now I could not get out that environment. I am automatically directed to the R environment after log in through my github and could no longer see the list of environment choice. This may be a bug. Need your help. Thanks a lot."

The solution / workaround for this currently is to manually change the URL to https:///hub/home to get to the server management screen where you can Stop the R Studio server and when you start a new one, you will be taken to the profile options screen.

This is not at all intuitive from a user perspective and it would be nice to have a way to get to the Stop Server screen from within the RStudio interface without needing to manually change the URL. The problem is that in the R Studio container, we just render the R Studio interface, and don't have a straightforward way of modifying it.

Of course, this is an issue that other folks have run into, and there is this issue open for 4+ years: jupyterhub/jupyter-rsession-proxy#90 . The problem is that over-riding the logout button in the R Studio interface is not so straightforward.

There would be a slightly "ugly" way to do this. From conversation with @yuvipanda -

We already have a function that takes a request and returns a response: https://github.com/jupyterhub/jupyter-rsession-proxy/blob/216d9e5e65f0a16af34cf1bafc418c4daa1e08d6/jupyter_rsession_proxy/__init__.py#L34

"all you gotta do is:

• Check if it's for the /rstudio/ URL
• at the end of the response, append a <script> tag"

In this script tag, we can write a bit of javascript to over-ride the handling of the logout button. From looking at the rendered output on /rstudio/, the markup structure is a bit awful with tables inside tables, and we'd have to be very careful about error handling and making sure we "fail gracefully".

@yuvipanda - you also mentioned about checking for an environment variable - I forget the details and can't find in our chat - could you drop that detail here?

The markup on /rstudio/ does seem a bit crazy to work with, so I doubt we'd be able to do anything beyond changing the behaviour / link of the "Logout" button in the interface. I would not recommend attempting to change any styling.

It's a little bit ugly, and I imagine something that could be a bit brittle when versions of RStudio change, etc. But it also seems simple enough to implement.

Checking if this is something you've seen people bump into @wildintellect - I can definitely see how a user can quite easily get into a state where it's not clear how they "exit" RStudio.

cc @slesaad @yuvipanda

[yuvipanda]

This has historically been a problem for upstream (jupyterhub/jupyter-rsession-proxy#90, but also elsewhere). The pathway to fixing this that I suggested to @batpad should be acceptable to upstream I think. @ryanlovett, one of the creators of jupyter-rsession-proxy, may also have thoughts.

The env var is JUPYTERHUB_BASE_URL, which should let you construct the URL to redirect users to for control panel. But also only do the override if running inside a JupyterHub

[yuvipanda]

I believe this was one of the pieces of feedback from the GHG hub workshop - this did happen to users.

[batpad]

@yuvipanda I think the feedback from workshop users was a little bit different from what's outlined in this ticket. There, I think it was more about instability issues with the R kernel, that seemed hard to reproduce. Unless I missed something?