Portable Unprivileged NeuroDesktop

An experimental unprivileged option for running NeuroDesktop without Docker or Podman.

Minimum System Requirements

  1. At least 5GB free space for neurodesktop base image
  2. At least 8GB of RAM

Downloading TinyRange

TinyRange (https://github.com/tinyrange/tinyrange) is a lightweight runtime for running Virtual Machines and Containers. It runs without admin privileges and doesn’t need Docker or Podman installed to work.

Downloading QEMU

  • Windows: TinyRange already includes QEMU so you can skip this step.
  • Ubuntu: sudo apt install qemu-kvm
  • MacOS: brew install qemu

Installing TinyRange

  • Unzip the archive to some local path on your computer. It’s recommended not to extract it to a network drive.
  • Open a terminal in the extracted archive and run ./tinyrange login or tinyrange login on Windows.
  • Once you see the tinyrange:~# type exit.

Running NeuroDesktop

  • Open a terminal in the TinyRange folder and run ./tinyrange login -c https://github.com/NeuroDesk/neurodesktop/raw/refs/heads/main/neurodesk.yml or tinyrange login -c https://github.com/NeuroDesk/neurodesktop/raw/refs/heads/main/neurodesk.yml on Windows
  • Neurodesktop will start up. Copy and paste the Jupyterhub link (starting with 127.0.0.1) at the end of the output to a browser.
  • Use Control+C in the terminal to exit.

Folder Sharing

Use --mount ~/neurodesktop-storage to share neurodesktop-storage (in Linux and MacOS) Use --mount C:/neurodesktop-storage to share C:/neurodesktop-storage (in Linux and MacOS)

The mounted directories will be visible under /shared inside Neurodesk.

For example:

./tinyrange login -c https://github.com/NeuroDesk/neurodesktop/raw/refs/heads/main/neurodesk.yml --mount C:/neurodesktop-storage

Changing CPU Cores, RAM, and/or Storage

  • CPU Cores: Add --cpu 8 to set the VM to 8 CPU cores.
  • RAM: Add --ram 8192 to set 8GB of RAM for the Virtual Machine.
  • Storage: Add --storage 16384 to allocate 16GB of disk for the Virtual MAchine.

Enabling Hardware Acceleration

  • Windows: This requires admin privileges. Search in your start menu for “Turn Windows features on or off.”. Find “Hyper-V Hypervisor” or “Windows Hypervisor Platform” and make sure it’s enabled. Then restart your computer.
  • Ubuntu/Other Linux: It should already work out of the box. If not make sure your user account has permission to read/write /dev/kvm.
  • MacOS: No extra steps required. It already works.
Last modified December 10, 2024: Docsy v0.11.0 (#465) (1f3d5dc)