ConvLearner PermissionError on Kaggle DB

fastai
1

Hi

I am trying to solve this MNIST challenge using fastai.

I am running on Crestle.

Everything works fine up to the following:

data = ImageClassifierData.from_arrays(path=working_directory, 
                                   trn=(train_X, train_y),
                                   val=(val_X, val_y),
                                   bs = 32,
                                   tfms=tfms_from_model(arch, sz),
                                   classes=classes,
                                   test=test_df
                                   )

running that immidiately gives a big error, which is concluded by

PermissionError

I read on the forums that I should run some crestle related code, from lesson 1:
os.makedirs(‘data/dogscats/models’, exist_ok=True)

 !ln -s /datasets/fast.ai/dogscats/train {PATH}
 !ln -s /datasets/fast.ai/dogscats/test {PATH}
 !ln -s /datasets/fast.ai/dogscats/valid {PATH}

 os.makedirs('/cache/tmp', exist_ok=True)
 !ln -fs /cache/tmp {PATH}

 os.makedirs('/cache/tmp', exist_ok=True)
 !ln -fs /cache/tmp {PATH}

This code is obviously specific, and won’t fit my case.

I don’t understand what this code does, why it solves the permission problem, or how to generalize to my case and folder structure.
Honestly, I also don’t like symbolic links. I prefer to know where the real everything is if possible.

How do I get past that permissions problem?

Thanks