The purpose of this repository is to facilitate setting up separate IPython notebook kernels for a list of users on one host machine.

Should work for:

• most Linux flavours
• Mac OS (tested on 10.8)

Currently, the test script fails a number of tests on Mac but everything works smoothly when the exact same sequence of commands is run interactively. Also, running the test cases still manages to add and remove the users and groups.

A setup script is provided:

[sudo] python setup.py install

This will install the nblauncher package as well as two executables nblauncher and ipython_dir. The latter is necessary for the nblauncher to find the location of the IPython Home for all users.

Once installed, the program nblauncher becomes available which can be invoked in six different ways. It always requires superuser privileges in order to run properly. Additionally, an alternative configuration file may be supplied as an argument.:

sudo nblauncher <setup | send | launch | shutdown | remove | retrieve> [config file]

• Each invocation requires the file with the user database to be present. The order of the header line does not matter. Running setup requires only the username to be present (in future email may be used to send login information to users directly).
• setup will generate system accounts for the users. Passwords for the system and to protect the ipython notebook are generated. If the IPython profile specified in the config file exists for the local user, the *.py files and the startup/*.py files are copied to the other users. It also internally invokes send.
• send will use a predefined directory and copy the material therein into each users' account.
• launch assigns a unique port to each user in a dumb way. It does not check whether the port is in use. IPython may check it but the change in port is not recognised. At the end a webserver will be launched that should direct each user to their specific notebook instance. The Python process will continue to run until terminated which shuts down the webserver.
• shutdown kills all IPython notebook kernels running under the user names provided, so be careful!
• remove will delete all user accounts including their home directories, be absolutely sure you want to do this! It will call retrieve internally before deleting the user.
• retrieve will copy the user generated files in the specified tutorial directory back into the owner's storage area for evaluation.
• Sample students.csv and notebooks.cfg files are provided.

• The notebook kernel instances require an ssl certificate file. This file must be in a location and have permissions that allow every user on the system to access it (each user is added to a supplementary group which could also be used for this but that's not tested). This means that the gid or others must have read and execute permissions for the certificate file and the whole directory tree leading to the file. Usually this is done by invoking:: chmod o+rx mycert.pem on the file and directories.
• On the hosting machine your firewall needs to allow tcp ports in the range of <webserver port> to <webserver port + number of students>.

• A running installation of the IPython Notebook which will also require tornado and pexpect.