A useful feature of the IPython Notebook is that you can set the server to broadcast so that others on your local network can see the server and your notebooks. This is especially nice as a teacher so that students can load your notebooks as you work, copy text out of them, and see them in their entirety instead of just what you have on screen. Here’s the outline of what to do, with detailed instructions below:

1. Create an IPython profile with a password for the Notebook server.
2. Figure out your IP address on the local network.
3. Launch IPython in broadcast + read-only mode using your new profile.
4. Have your students navigate to your Notebook server.

Make a New Profile

IPython has quite a number of configuration options that you might like to be set one way or another depending what you’re doing. To help make that configuration management easier IPython has profiles. We’re going to make a new profile in which we’ll set a password that must be entered to edit or make new notebooks. Here’s the command:

ipython profile create teaching

I’ll use a profile named “teaching” throughout these instructions, you can name it whatever you like.

Setting a Notebook Password

One of IPython’s configuration options is the ability to set a password on the Notebook server. This usually makes it so that only people with the password can access the server, but if you start the server with the --read-only flag anyone can access and see the notebooks, but only you with the password can can edit notebooks or make new ones.

Follow the IPython instructions on making a Notebook password to generate your password hash string. Once you’ve got your password hash string
(which should look something like sha1:67c9e60bb8b6:9ffede0825894254b2e042ea597d771089e11aed), you’re going to put that into the Notebook configuration file for you new teaching profile. To find out where that is you can run this command:

ipython locate profile teaching

It will probably tell you something like ~/.ipython/profile_teaching, which is the directory where the configuration files for that profile are stored. Open the file called ipython_notebook_config.py within that directory and find the line that has the string c.NotebookApp.password. Uncomment that line and paste your password hash string into the empty quotes there. When you’re done it should like this:

c.NotebookApp.password = u'sha1:67c9e60bb8b6:9ffede0825894254b2e042ea597d771089e11aed'

And when you start the Notebook server with the teaching profile it will be password protected. You can change your password at any time be generating a new password hash string and pasting into ipython_notebook_config.py.

Find Out Your IP Address

Your students need to know where to point their browsers so they can see your notebooks and for that you need to know your IP address on the local network. On Macs you can get this from the Network pane of System Preferences, but I like to use this Python script from Software Carpentry, which should work on any system. On my home WiFi my IP is usually something like 10.0.1.9 but it will vary depending on where you are. Take note of your IP address, in a minute we’ll combine it with the port number used by the IPython Notebook server so your students can type something into their URL bars.

Start The Notebook Server and Note the Port Number

It’s time to start your Notebook server with some added options. You’re going to tell it:

• Use my teaching profile: --profile=teaching
• Broadcast yourself: --ip='*'
• Allow others to see my notebooks without a password: --read-only

Here’s what the whole command looks like:

ipython notebook --profile=teaching --read-only --ip='*'

When IPython starts up the Notebook server it will print a line containing the URL of the server, including the port number. It will look like this:

[NotebookApp] The IPython Notebook is running at: http://[all ip addresses on your system]:8888/

The last four numbers after the colon (in this case 8888) are the port number of the server. Take note of that number.

Tell Your Students Where to Go

Finally you can tell your students what to type into their browsers. Combine your IP address with the Notebook server port number (separated by a colon) and that will be the URL your students go to. For me that would be:

http://10.0.1.9:8888/

When your students land there they should see the usual IPython Notebook dashboard and they should be able to look at your existing notebooks, but they shouldn’t be able to create new notebooks, save changes to your notebooks, or execute code.

Some Notes

• The students’ views don’t update in real time. I find that in order for them to see my changes I must save my notebook and then the students have to manually reload. They won’t see unsaved changes and they won’t see any changes at all unless they reload.
• The IPython security docs recommend making an SSL certificate so you can connect to your server over HTTPS, which will encrypt your password. I generally don’t bother, but be advised that anyone who can execute code on your computer can do things like delete your entire hard drive. Either way, be sure not to use a password you use anywhere else.