How to run Jupyter Notebook on Server

Access to Server (e.g., Pascal)

Open terminal and use your account and password to log in the server, e.g.,

1	$ ssh your_account_name@pascal.ieda.ust.hk

Then enter your password.

Create a notebook configuration file

Use the following command to generate jupyter_notebook_config.py, whose default parent directory is ~/.jupyter, if you don’t have one:

1	$ jupyter notebook --generate-config

Generate a hased password

Open Python from terminal and use the following commands to obtain your hashed password:

>>> from notebook.auth import passwd
>>> passwd()
Enter password:
Verrfy password:
'sha1:xxx...'
>>> ctrl+z

Remember your hashed password for later use.

Use SSL for security

You can secure the connection (https://) using a self-sighed certificate:

1	$ openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:1024 -keyout mykey.key -out mycert.pem

This command requires you to enter some personal information and one password for future use (login the Maxwell on your laptop, browser password). It would also generate two files mykey.key and mycert.pem in the current directory, for later use.

Run a public notebook server

This step would let you access notebook on maxwell via a web browser. Open the configuration file via following command:

1	$ vim ~/.jupyter/jupyter_notebook_config.py

Find the following lines, make corresponding changes and uncomment them:

## The full path to an SSL/TLS certificate file.
c.NotebookApp.certfile = u'./mycert.pem'
	
## The IP address the notebook server will listen on.
c.NotebookApp.ip = '*'

## The full path to a private key file for usage with SSL/TLS.
c.NotebookApp.keyfile = u'./mykey.key'
	
c.NotebookApp.password = u'sha1:xxx...<your hashed password>'
	
c.NotebookApp.open_browser = False

## The port the notebook server will listen on.
c.NotebookApp.port = 9999

Save and exit.

After above settings, you can start the notebook using the jupyter notebook command. Open your browser, e.g, Safari, go to

1	https://pascal.ieda.ust.hk:<your port>

It needs your password to enter (browser password created via SSL).

Remark

The default location of mycert.pem and mykey.key is in the home directory ~/if you use the above seeting. Acturally, you can move them to other directory, e.g., ~/.jupyter/, then edit the addresses of certfile and keyfile in configuration file (see above).
You can use nohup command if you still want to use the notebook on Maxwell after you close the notebook terminal window, e.g,

1	$ nohup jupyter notebook > log &

Adcanced:

1	$ nohup jupyter notebook > /dev/null 2>&1 &

Note: you can also rename the config file, e.g., myconfig.py, then modify above nohup command as follows

1	$ nohup jupyter notebook --config=/home/kxie@HKUST/.jupyter/myconfig.py > /dev/null 2>&1 &

If you want to kill it later, use kill $(pgrep jupyter). Or use commend netstat -tulnp to check the Jupyter process, then kill -9 PID.

That’s it, enjoy your notebook on your server.