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JupyterHub, a multi-user server, manages and proxies multiple instances of the single-user IPython Jupyter notebook server.

Three actors:

• multi-user Hub (tornado process)
• configurable http proxy (node-http-proxy)
• multiple single-user IPython notebook servers (Python/IPython/tornado)

Basic principles:

• Hub spawns proxy
• Proxy forwards ~all requests to hub by default
• Hub handles login, and spawns single-user servers on demand
• Hub configures proxy to forward url prefixes to single-user servers

JupyterHub requires IPython >= 3.0 (current master) and Python >= 3.3.

Install nodejs/npm, which is available from your package manager. For example, install on Linux (Debian/Ubuntu) using:

sudo apt-get install npm nodejs-legacy

(The nodejs-legacy package installs the node executable and is currently required for npm to work on Debian/Ubuntu.)

Next, install JavaScript dependencies:

sudo npm install -g configurable-http-proxy

Notes on the pip command used in the installation directions below:

• sudo may be needed for pip install, depending on the user's filesystem permissions.

• JupyterHub requires Python >= 3.3, so pip3 may be required on some machines for package installation instead of pip (especially when both Python 2 and Python 3 are installed on a machine). If pip3 is not found, install it using (on Linux Debian/Ubuntu):

    sudo apt-get install python3-pip
  

JupyterHub can be installed with pip:

pip3 install jupyterhub

If you plan to run notebook servers locally, you may also need to install the Jupyter IPython notebook:

pip3 install notebook

For a development install, clone the repository and then install from source:

git clone https://github.com/jupyter/jupyterhub
cd jupyterhub
pip3 install -r dev-requirements.txt -e .

If the pip3 install command fails and complains about lessc being unavailable, you may need to explicitly install some additional JavaScript dependencies:

npm install

This will fetch client-side JavaScript dependencies necessary to compile CSS.

You may also need to manually update JavaScript and CSS after some development updates, with:

python3 setup.py js    # fetch updated client-side js (changes rarely)
python3 setup.py css   # recompile CSS from LESS sources

To start the server, run the command:

jupyterhub

and then visit http://localhost:8000, and sign in with your unix credentials.

To allow multiple users to sign into the server, you will need to run the jupyterhub command as a privileged user, such as root. The wiki describes how to run the server as a less privileged user, which requires more configuration of the system.

See the getting started document for the basics of configuring your JupyterHub deployment.

Generate a default config file:

jupyterhub --generate-config

Spawn the server on 10.0.1.2:443 with https:

jupyterhub --ip 10.0.1.2 --port 443 --ssl-key my_ssl.key --ssl-cert my_ssl.cert

The authentication and process spawning mechanisms can be replaced, which should allow plugging into a variety of authentication or process control environments. Some examples, meant as illustration and testing of this concept:

• Using GitHub OAuth instead of PAM with OAuthenticator
• Spawning single-user servers with Docker, using the DockerSpawner

We encourage you to ask questions on the mailing list:

and you may participate in development discussions or get live help on Gitter:

• Project Jupyter website
• Documentation for JupyterHub [PDF]
• Documentation for Project Jupyter [PDF]
• Issues
• Technical support - Jupyter Google Group