Vertex AI workbench managed jupyterlab vim settings not working

[razak469]

The Vertex AI jupyterlab provides an option  (under "Settings/Text Editor Key Map") to set the key mapping to vim, however setting this has no effect. I am using managed notebook from Vetex AI workbench. If there is no solution to this, is there a workaround to have local jupyterlab sync with Vertex AI managed jupyter lab(similar to the port forwarding solution is available from https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/docs/workbench/user-managed/ssh-access for user managed notebook).  I prefer to use vim editor in managed Vertex AI jupyterlab notebooks. 

Installing jupyterlab vim extension is not an option for  Vertex Workbench managed notebooks unlike Vertex user manged notebooks (due to security reasons I assume). 

Hope to get a concrete practical solution. Thanks

[lsolatorio]

Hi @razak469, 

As I understand your situation, you wanted your user-managed and managed Vertex AI notebooks to work together. Indeed, there is no specific document that explicitly lists down steps on how to do it.

You can try to utilize multiple Google Cloud services as a workaround:

• Have your user-managed and managed notebook instances in a single project
• Employ a Service Account where you can set IAM roles to access your notebook instance
• Consider having a cloud storage bucket that your notebooks can access
• Install and build a pipeline for your notebooks

Here are some usable references:

• Manage access to a user-managed notebooks instance's JupyterLab interface
• Manage access to a managed notebooks instance's JupyterLab interface
• Access Cloud Storage buckets and files in JupyterLab
• Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations
• Vertex AI Pipelines

Hope this helps

[razak469]

Hi @lsolatorio, Thank you for the response. It seems like you didn't understand the question.

My question was about enabling a feature within "google managed Vertex AI notebooks", specifically enabling vim editor features.  Which as it is doesn't work (ie it does'nt enable vim editor capabilities. Read the initial question, please). I am able to have it worked in "user managed Vertex AI" because I can install jupyter lab extension plugins (specifically @axlair/jupyterlab_vim in this case). But "google managed Vertex AI" doesn't allow you to install any extension plugins other than the pre-installed ones. Please don't answer saying why I cant install community third party plugins in 'google managed Vertex AI notebooks"(I am sure that is due to security concern), since that is not relevant here.

A solution to my question is a good work around to have the feature enabled staying within any safety and other constraints imposed for  a "google managed Vertex AI notebook instance".