Access IPython Notebook through SSH to avoid firewall

Access IPython Notebook through SSH to avoid firewall

I usually run ipython notebook on a server and access the web-interface from a different computer. This enables me to start a lengthy computation, shut my laptop and come back once it's done.

However, I recently had the problem that I was not able to find a good way of opening the ipython-specific port in the firewall. Also, it's a bit dangerous to do so.

I was therefore happy to have stumbled across a blog post which told me how to access ipython through a SSH-tunnel. Basically, this allows to access ipython running on any computer that you can access via SSH.

Here's the recipe:

1. On the server, start the ipython notebook:

ipython notebook --no-browser --port=8889

2. On the local machine, setup a pipe with

ssh -N -n -L localhost:8889:localhost:8889 user@servername

(this will have to be redone after opening your laptop again)

3. access your ipython notebook locally with localhost:8889

Setup IPython

Here is an outline how I setup my IPython to serve all my scientific needs:

1. make and activate an virtualenv:

virtualenv local/python/name
source local/python/name/bin/activate

2. get the most recent ipython

## get the cutting edge ipython version
git clone --recursive https://github.com/ipython/ipython.git
# and install all its dependencies
cd ipython
pip install -e ".[notebook]" 

3. get all the cool packages

pip install numpy
pip install scipy
pip install matplotlib
pip install pandas
pip install rpy2
pip install seaborn
pip install pymc
pip install statsmodels
pip install ipycache
pip install pushbullet.py