Class Accounts at the End of the Semester

Owned by Giang Rudderham
Last updated: Mar 27, 2024

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Download Data from IDAS Class Account

If you are using IDAS for a course, the IDAS instance built for your course only lasts for the duration of the semester. At the end of each semester, we routinely deprovision (remove) old course instances in order to prepare resources for a new semester. Once we deprovisioned your course instance, all data in your IDAS class account will be deleted. We strongly recommend that you download any data, codes, and files from your IDAS class account to your personal computer before your course instance is deprovisioned.

We deprovision all course instances on IDAS 1 week after grades are due. To determine when grades are due, please see these Grading Schedules from the Office of the Registrar. 


Follow the steps below to download data from your IDAS class account to your computer:

1. Log in to the IDAS instance for your course.

 

2. Start a Terminal session - Pick one of the options below:

Pick one of the options below, depending on whether you are using JupyterLab, Jupyter Notebook, or RStudio.

a) Option 1: If you are using JupyterLab, click the Terminal tile under Other in your JupyterLab page:

image-20240119-234837.png

 

b) Option 2: If you are using Jupyter Notebook, click New in the upper right section of the Jupyter Hub page, then click Terminal:

image-20240327-194458.png

 

c) Option 3: If you are using RStudio, click on the Terminal tab, which is next to the Console tab in RStudio:

3. Compress all files and directories in your home directory by running the following commands in Terminal. This can take a few minutes, especially if you have a lot of files in your IDAS home directory.

# make sure you are in your IDAS home directory cd ~ # compress all files and directories in your home directory zip -r backup.zip *

  • In the zip command, the -r option means including all sub-directories and * means everything in the current directory.

  • For more information about the zip command, please type in Terminal: zip --help

 

4. After the commands finish running in Terminal, a file called backup.zip will be available in your IDAS home directory.

Pick one of the options below, depending on whether you are using JupyterLab, Jupyter Notebook, or RStudio.

a) Option 1: If you are using JupyterLab, you will find backup.zip in the left-side panel in JupyterLab, like in this partial screenshot:

To download backup.zip to your computer, right-click on the file name, then click Download:

 

b) Option 2: If you are using Jupyter Notebook, you can find backup.zip in your Jupyter Hub page, like in this partial screenshot:

To download backup.zip, check the box in front of the file name, then click Download:

 

c) Option 3: If you are using RStudio, you can find backup.zip in the Files tab in RStudio, like in this partial screenshot:

To download backup.zip to your computer, check the box in front of the file name, then click More and then Export like in the screenshot below.

Click Download. The file will be downloaded to your computer.

 

5. After backup.zip has been downloaded to your computer, you can use a free software such as 7-zip to extract the files in backup.zip to a location in your computer.

Transition from Class Account to Research Account

If you want to continue using IDAS after your course ends, please request a free individual IDAS research account. Research accounts are available to current UI faculty, staff, and students who are participating in research projects. Please see the section "Request an IDAS Account for Research Use" in this article for more information.

Files in your class account will not transfer to your research account. Please download any data, codes, and files from your class account to your computer before your course instance is deprovisioned.

Contact

If you have any questions or comments, please contact research-computing@uiowa.edu.