Getting Started

Installation

seamm_webui is pip-installable and does not require conda or the rest of the SEAMM stack to be installed first (though it does need a SEAMM datastore to point at):

pip install seamm_webui

Running it

Start the server, pointed at an existing SEAMM datastore (defaults to ~/SEAMM/Jobs):

seamm-webui --datastore ~/SEAMM/Jobs

If the datastore has no database yet (seamm.db) but there are job directories in it, the database is built from them when the server starts, as the old Dashboard did: each job’s flowchart and job_data.json are imported. Such a database has no accounts from before; to rebuild a database while keeping its accounts and job owners, use seamm-manager datastore rebuild instead. Neither converts flowcharts to format 3.0 – that is seamm-manager flowcharts migrate.

This is fully self-contained: a release install (from PyPI) bundles the built browser UI, so there’s nothing else to start or configure – visit the URL it prints and the dashboard itself is what loads (not just the API). A source/editable install that hasn’t run npm run build in frontend/ falls back to serving the API only.

By default this binds to 127.0.0.1 with no login required – fine for using it on your own machine. To make it reachable from other machines, pass a non-loopback --host; real per-user login then becomes required automatically (seamm-webui refuses to start otherwise), and so does HTTPS: with no --ssl-certfile/--ssl-keyfile given, a self-signed certificate is generated once and reused from then on (browsers will warn about it being untrusted, the same as any self-signed certificate, until it’s trusted or replaced with a real one). See seamm-webui --help for the full set of options, and the User Guide for how authentication works.

If the paired JobServer instance (the one actually running submitted jobs, sharing the same --root) is configured with more than one queue – different clusters, or a plain local-subprocess queue alongside one or more real SLURM ones – GET /api/queues lists them, for a submission client (e.g. the SEAMM desktop app’s submit dialog) to offer a picker instead of always using that instance’s default; the job list/detail pages here also show which queue a job ran on (see the User Guide). This needs no configuration beyond what the JobServer itself already has: seamm-webui reads the same <root>/<jobserver-name>.ini. The one case needing an explicit --jobserver-name is a host running more than one independent JobServer instance – it otherwise defaults to this host’s hostname, matching the JobServer’s own default.

For a queue with transport = ssh (a remote SLURM cluster with no filesystem shared with the JobServer), a running job’s files live in a scratch directory on that remote host and are otherwise only pulled back once the job finishes. seamm-webui reuses that same seamm_slurm staging machinery to pull them back on demand instead – automatically when a job’s detail page is opened, and again from that page’s file viewer Refresh button – so files are visible while the job is still running, not just after. This also needs no separate configuration: it reads the same ini section (remote_root, etc.) the JobServer itself uses to stage the job out there in the first place.

For setting this up as a persistent daemon (rather than a foreground terminal command), see Installation.

Accounts for that login mode are created with the companion seamm-webui-user command, e.g.:

seamm-webui-user create alice

An existing account’s password can be reset the same way (e.g. if it’s forgotten, or was only ever a bootstrap/test default):

seamm-webui-user set-password alice

This always prompts for the new password interactively (there’s no --password flag, unlike create) so it’s never typed anywhere – a shell command, a shared terminal session – where it could be captured. seamm-webui-user delete alice removes an account entirely (asks for confirmation unless --yes is given).

Once one admin account can log in, the same create/reset-password/delete operations are also available from the web UI’s Admin page (see the User Guide) – the command line is really only needed for that first account, before anyone can log in yet.

That should be enough to get started. For more detail about using the dashboard, see the User Guide.