Cloudera Docs

Configuring the Engine Environment

This section describes some of the ways you can configure engine environments to meet the requirements of your projects.

Environmental Variables
For information on how environmental variables can be used to configure engine environments in Cloudera Data Science Workbench, see https://docs.cloudera.com/cdsw/1.10.4/environment-variables/topics/cdsw-environment-variables.html.
CDH Parcel Directory
Starting with Cloudera Data Science Workbench 1.5, the CDH parcel directory property is no longer available in the Site Administration panel. By default, Cloudera Data Science Workbench looks for the CDH parcel at /opt/cloudera/parcels.

If you want to use a custom location for your parcels, use one of the following methods to configure this custom location:

CSD deployments: If you are using the default parcel directory, /opt/cloudera/parcels, no action is required. If you want to use a custom location for the parcel directory, configure this in Cloudera Manager as documented here.

OR

RPM deployments: If you are using the default parcel directory, /opt/cloudera/parcels, no action is required. If you want to specify a custom location for the parcel directory, configure the DISTRO_DIR property in the cdsw.conf file on both master and worker hosts. Run cdsw restart after you make this change.

Configuring Host Mounts
By default, Cloudera Data Science Workbench will automatically mount the CDH parcel directory and client configuration for required services such as HDFS, Spark, and YARN into each project's engine. However, if users want to reference any additional files/folders on the host, site administrators will need to configure them here so that they are loaded into engine containers at runtime. Note that the directories specified here will be available to all projects across the deployment.

To configure additional mounts, go to Admin > Engines and add the paths to be mounted from the host to the Mounts section.



The following table summarizes how mounts are loaded into engine containers in current and previous Cloudera Data Science Workbench releases.
CDSW Version Mount Point Permissions in Engines
1.4.2 (and higher)

By default, mount points are loaded into engine containers with read-only permissions. CDSW 1.4.2 (and higher) also include a Write Access checkbox (see image) that you can use to enable read-write access for individual mounted directories. Note that these permissions will apply to all projects across the deployment.
1.4.0

Mount points are loaded into engine containers with read-only permissions.
1.3.x (and lower)

Mount points are loaded into engine containers with read-write permissions.
Points to Remember:

  • When adding host mounts, try to be as generic as possible without mounting common system files. For example, if you want to add several files under /etc/spark2-conf, you can simplify and mount the /etc/spark2-conf directory; but adding the parent /etc might prevent the engine from running.

    As a general rule, do not mount full system directories that are already in use; such as /var, /tmp, or /etc. This also serves to avoid accidentally exposing confidential information in running sessions. Do not set JAVA_HOME to a path under these directories because CDSW sessions will mount the JAVA_HOME location from the host in the session engine container which can interfere with the operation of the engine container.

  • Do not add duplicate mount points. This will lead to sessions crashing in the workbench.

Configuring Shared Memory Limit for Docker Images
You can increase the shared memory size for the sessions, experiments, and jobs running within an Engine container within your project. For Docker, the default size of the available shared memory is 64MB.
To increase the shared memory limit:
  1. From CDSW web UI, go to Projects > Project Settings > Engine > Advanced Settings.
  2. Specify the shared memory size in the Shared Memory Limit field.
  3. Click Save Advanced Settings to save the configuration and exit.

This mounts a volume with the tmpfs file system to /dev/shm and Kubernetes will enforce the given limit. The maximum size of this volume is the half of your physical RAM in the node without the swap.

Setting Time Zones for Sessions and Jobs
The default time zone for Cloudera Data Science Workbench sessions is UTC. This is the default regardless of the time zone setting on the Master host.

To change to your preferred time zone, for example, Pacific Standard Time (PST), navigate to Admin > Engines. Under the Environmental Variables section, add a new variable with the name set to TZ and value set to America/Los_Angeles, and click Add.