e-learning
Galaxy Interactive Tools
Abstract
Galaxy Interactive Tools (GxITs) are a method to run containerized tools that are interactive in nature. Interactive Tools typically run a persistent service accessed on a specific port and run until terminated by the user. One common example of such a tool is [Jupyter Notebook][jupyter]. Galaxy Interactive Tools are similar in purpose to [Galaxy Interactive Environments]gie-docs, but are implemented in a significantly different manner. Most notably, instead of directly invoking containers on the Galaxy server, dedicated Docker node, or as a Docker Swarm service (as is done for GIEs), Interactive Tools are submitted through Galaxy's job management system and thus are scheduled the same as any other Galaxy tool - on a Slurm cluster, for instance. Galaxy Interactive Tools were introduced in Galaxy Release 19.09.
About This Material
This is a Hands-on Tutorial from the GTN which is usable either for individual self-study, or as a teaching material in a classroom.
Questions this will address
- What are Galaxy Interactive Tools?
- How can I enable Interactive Tools on my Galaxy instance?
Learning Objectives
- Understand what Galaxy Interactive Tools are and how they work
- Be aware of the security implications of Interactive Tools
- Have a basic understanding of the Interactive Tools (GxIT/GIE) Proxy, its purpose, and configuration
- Be familiar with wildcard SSL certificates and how to get them from Let's Encrypt
- Configure your Galaxy to serve Interactive Tools using an Ansible Playbook
- Start, run, and use an Interactive Tool
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Keywords: Galaxy Server administration, ansible, interactive-tools
Target audience: Galaxy Administrators
Resource type: e-learning
Version: 27
Status: Active
Prerequisites:
- Ansible
- Connecting Galaxy to a compute cluster
- Galaxy Installation with Ansible
- Mapping Jobs to Destinations using TPV
Learning objectives:
- Understand what Galaxy Interactive Tools are and how they work
- Be aware of the security implications of Interactive Tools
- Have a basic understanding of the Interactive Tools (GxIT/GIE) Proxy, its purpose, and configuration
- Be familiar with wildcard SSL certificates and how to get them from Let's Encrypt
- Configure your Galaxy to serve Interactive Tools using an Ansible Playbook
- Start, run, and use an Interactive Tool
Date modified: 2025-04-08
Date published: 2020-02-27
Contributors: Armin Dadras, Björn Grüning, Gianmauro Cuccuru, Helena Rasche, José Manuel Domínguez, Lucille Delisle, Marius van den Beek, Martin Čech, Nate Coraor, Nicola Soranzo, Saskia Hiltemann, Simon Gladman, Tomas Klingström
Scientific topics: Software engineering
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