Installing Qiskit and Jupyter Notebook as a service

Qiskit is an opensource python framework, supported by IBM, for working with quantum computers or simulators.

Although this framework can run on a laptop, I'm often short on RAM, and my MacBook Pro swaps when I'm running too many Firefox instances, and all my tools. In addition, starting coding implies running some commands to launch en environment.

Having a ready-to-use Jupiter Notebook server in a homelab server would be more convenient, so, let's install it there as a service!

This post has been written for my Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 homelab server. It should work as-is on recent RHEL, CentOS Stream or Fedora boxes. Others distros may require some adjustments.

Installing Qiskit

Preparing the venv

It's possible to install multiple Qiskit versions in different virtual env.

We'll store the venv in /usr/local/qiksit:

# cd /usr/local/
# mkdir qiskit
# cd qiskit
# python3 -m venv q2.x

Then, activate this virtual env:

# source q2.x/bin/activate

Then, to install Qiskit using pip, it's a good idea to use a requirements.txt file to ensure the reproducibility of the installation.

Here is the content of the requirements.txt file:

qiskit
qiskit-ibm-runtime
qiskit[visualization]
jupyter

To install these requirements, run the following command

# pip install -r requirements.txt 

Qiskit is installed! Let's configure systemd to run jupyter notebook during boot

Configuring systemd

Creating the startup script

It's easier to maintain the startup arguments in a dedicated script.

This script will be stored in /usr/local/qiksit/q2.x/jupyter-q2.x.sh:

#!/bin/bash

#Activate the venv
. /usr/local/qiskit/2.x/q2x/bin/activate


/usr/local/qiskit/2.x/q1x/bin/jupyter-lab \
  --notebook-dir=/home/Nicolas/qiskit/2.x/ \
  --ip='*' \
  --port=6002 \
  --NotebookApp.token='' \
  --no-browser

Make this script executable

# chmod a+x /usr/local/qiksit/q2.x/jupyter-q2.x.sh

Open the firewall

# firewall-cmd  --add-port=6002/tcp
# firewall-cmd  --add-port=6002/tcp --permanent 

Creating the systemd unit

The file will be created in my home directory in .config/systemd/user/jupiter-q1.x.service .config/systemd/user/jupiter-q2.x.service

[Unit]
Description=Jupyter Notebook for qiskit 2

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/qiskit/2.x/jupyter-q2.x.sh

Restart=always
RestartSec=10

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Activating the service

Don't forget to create the directory where jupyter will store the notebooks

$ cd $HOME
$ mkdir -p qiskit/2.x/

Activate the service at startup, and run it:

$ systemd enable --user --now jupiter-q1.x.service 

Test it

Jupyter Lab is now accessible on your machine, with the port chosen, here 6002:

It doesn't work from a Mac machine? Please ensure giving the appropriate permissions to your browser ;-)