iPython Notebooks on a remote server

What is iPython Notebook?

From iPython.org:

The IPython Notebook is an interactive computational environment, in which you can combine code execution, rich text, mathematics, plots and rich media, as shown in this example session:

iPython Notebook example

The IPython notebook with embedded rich text, code, mathematics and figures. It aims to be an agile tool for both exploratory computation and data analysis, and provides a platform to support reproducible research, since all inputs and outputs may be stored in a one-to-one way in notebook documents.

Setup your virtualenv

You can follow the instructions to setup a virtualenv here.

Install iPython Notebook

  1. Start your virtualenv
  2. Run pip install ipython['notebook']

Run iPython Notebook

Run ipython notebook --no-browser --port=54321

Note: You can use any open port higher than 1024 and less than 65535

Forward the connection locally

On another terminal, run ssh -L 54321:localhost:54321 user@server

Note: Remember to change user, server and the port to what you specified previously.

Accessing your iPython Notebook

Open up your favorite browser and go to http://localhost:54321