port usage in the ipython notebook - ipython

I'm having a problem with running an ipython notebook server. I've written a series of custom ROI (Region Of Interest) widgets for the notebook that allow a user to draw shapes like rectangles and ellipses on an image displayed in the notebook, then send information about the shapes back to python running on the server. All information is passed via widget traitlets; the shape info is in a handles traitlet of type object. When I run this locally on port 8888 (the default) and access it with firefox running on the same computer, everything works. (The system in this case is a Mac running OSX Yosemite).
Now I tried to access it remotely by making an ssh connection from another computer (ubuntu linux, in this case) and forwarding local port 8888 to 8888 on the host. This almost works: firefox running on the client is able to access the ipython notebook server, execute code in notebooks, etc. The ROI widgets also display and seem to work properly, except for one thing: no information about the shapes drawn makes it back to the server.
This is not just an issue of remote access (although that's the most important for my intended use). I have exactly the same problem if I run locally, but use a port other than 8888. For instance, if I set the port to 9999 in ipython_notebook_config.py, run the notebook server and access it with a local firefox, I get exactly the same problem. Similarly, if I run ipython notebook twice with all default settings, the second instance binds port 8889, because 8888 was bound by the first. When I access the server running at 8888 with a local firefox, everything works; when I access the simultaneously running server running at 8889, my widgets once more fail to send info back to the server. If I use --debug, I can see all the comm_msgs passed. The server running on 8888 receives messages that contain shape info, as expected. These messages simply don't show up in the log of the server running at 8889.
Any thoughts?

I never did figure out the answer to my question -- why the port matters. However, I found that my ROI widgets had a rookie mistake on the JavaScript side (I'm fairly new to JS programming) that, when fixed, made all the problems go away. Ironically, the puzzle now is why it worked when I was using the default port!

Related

How does VS Code automatically detect port allocated by the command and start port forwarding it when working remotely?

I know that this question look similar to VSCode [Remote Development] [Forward Port] work? but it isn't.
When I launch a command which starts a web server on a random port (and prints out the url to access it),
VS Code auto detects the newly allocated port and starts port forwarding that port to my host machine.
How does this happen? Does VS Code check for newly allocated port by the current command ? If so, how does the shell script for this look like ?
This has been answered by VSCode developer on github here.
To summarize, VSCode will actively look into the proc file system ie. /proc directory and detect the port that was allocated and then start auto portforwarding it.
Assuming remote.autoForwardPorts is set to true, it depends on the operating system that VS Code is running on.
On Windows and Mac remotes, it picks up from the terminal output (the output option under remote.autoForwardPortsSource):
Note: on Windows and Mac remotes, selecting the process option has no effect and output will be used.
On other operating system remotes, if the process option is selected, VS Code watches for processes that start with a port included, and automatically forwards ports for those:

Local web server on windows stopped being reachable by devices on the same network

I use a local Python web server on my Windows machine. It’s simple, but good enough while in the static web page development stage. I just run it with something like this on my WSL command line:
python3 -m http.server
I can also access it on mobile devices on the same network, by going to my local address, e.g.: http://192.168.1.12:8000. All was good, until suddenly I could no longer access it on external devices, I got a “server not responding” type of message. Also, I could clearly see that when I refreshed the page on my phone, there was no GET request on the logs.
Immediately I tested on the local machine, and it was still working fine. This obviously smelled like a Firewall. In Linux, I’d know what to do, but it’s the first time I had to deal with this on Windows. This is what I’ve tried, without resolving the connection problem:
I opened the Event Viewer but could not see any obvious logs to check
I stopped the server (CTRL+C) and started it again on another port (5000). The Windows Firewall message popped up again asking for permission for Python3 to access the “Public network” and the “Private network”. Normally I just tick the “private network” but this time I checked both, as a troubleshooting step, in case my Wi-Fi was incorrectly being considered “public”.
I went to Windows Firewall and temporarily shut it down on the private network.
I installed and tried running nmap on the WSL, but it failed to run and prompted me to install the Windows version instead.
I installed and ran the Windows version of nmap but it told me that port 5000 was open.
What is the recommended way to troubleshoot and fix this issue?
Still suspecting the firewall, I tried something new, I switched off the “public network” firewall. I tested on my mobile and the page loaded as normal again! I immediately turned the firewall back on. Tested the page on my mobile once more, still fine. So, the solution was to toggle the public network firewall. I would make it more generic and toggle all firewall categories on Windows. And of course, I would make sure that the firewall stays on, this was a very quick operation.
I thought I’d put this here rather than ServerFault or SuperUser as it could potentially be more useful to developers, and it took a precious hour of my time. I still don’t know why it stopped working on its own in the first place. Better troubleshooting steps or suggestions are welcome, but I probably won’t be able to verify it as I don’t know how to purposely induce the issue.
Another solution that worked another time, was to delete all instances of Python 3.8 from the list of allowed apps (I don't know why Windows shows the same app multiple times) then (re)start the Python server and allow it through when the Firewall question pops up again.
In windows firewall you may have 4 options to configure your local web server when you are creating new Inbound connections rule.
1 Program
2 Port
3 Predefined
4 Custom
Try to use port only in "TCP protocol" and the custom port.
Allow connection.
Select: all checks: domain, private and public.
Enter a name.
Thats all.

client is waiting forever for remote server to return a webpage

I have an application with a server written in F# and serve web files using suave. I remote login using powershell into another machine in the network to run the application (The application is also in one of the network drives). I do that because that machine have access to third party APIs needed for the server. Now when I do [IPAddress_Of_Remote_Machine]/[html_file] or [name_of_pc]/[html_file] then chrome is waiting forever and doesn't ever return the webpage. This wasn't happening before and I ran into this problem recently. I opened a different port and used it instead of the default one 80. This made things work but the problem keeps showing up after a couple of days. I don't think it's a firewall issue but I'm clueless to why this is happening.
When running netstat -an, this is what I get (I hid the IP address):
As you can see all of the connections are either in CLOSE_WAIT or ESTABLISHED but not LISTENING. All of these TCP connections is probably because I have PhantomJS and two other APIs running in the application as well. However the loop back address is also open on the same port 5959:
I'm not sure what is difference between these two but when using PortQryUI to query the remote server it returns a success!
I have already made an inbound rule for port 5959 on the server so it should be allowed. The web page is stuck at Waiting for [name_of_pc]. Also, sometimes this problem disappears and everything works fine.
What is the potential problem behind this? Why would this happen all of a sudden?
UPDATE:
I re-ran the application today and it's working correctly. It could be that something is dynamically set within the firewall? Not really sure what is going on. The machine I'm running the server on has a bunch of applications running on it as well so maybe there is an external process that is affecting it?
I made a hello world app with Suave and deployed it on the network drive to test if it's going to work. I opened inbound rule for port 6001
Then I ran the app:
However, it's still not working and this time it says the site cannot be reached when I do: http://[name_of_pc]:6001.
Moving this to an answer so that it can be closed:
Could you post the bindings section of your suave cfg? I'm guessing you know where that is since you are using a non-standard port but if you need don't, search for HttpBinding. I suspect you will find it pointing to 127.0.0.1 which is not good enough for remote access. You could try changing it to 0.0.0.0 or to the server's actual IP address. I would try 0.0.0.0 first for the flexibility it provides

How to check if inbound port is in use

I'm developing Firefox addon that communicate with external program by sockets. This program create local socket server on specified port when this addon need it. I would like to ckeck from this addon whether this application has opened this port already.
On Win7 when server isn't created yet I receive in socket created by addon NS_ERROR_CONNECTION_REFUSED in nsIRequestObserver::onStopRequest but if I can feel certain port isn't open when I receive this error?
You try to connect and see if the connection succeeds.
If it doesn't, then the port is not reachable (open).
That's the most obvious and easiest answer.
Other low-level solutions would require polling the OS itself somehow. That would be cross platform specific (so you'd need to write an implementation per platform) and also there is no API readily available so you'd have to mess around with C/C++ or at least js-ctypes, or hack together some ugly "execute this program and check output" stuff. All of which doesn't worth the fuzz.
If you want to find out which "inbound ports" are in use in windows you can use cmd,
if you don't know how to open cmd - open the run dialog by pressing windows-key+r. type cmd and hit enter
type netstat -a and hit enter and it will list all "listening" ports.
more info - http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-security/list-open-ports-and-listening-services/

Is it possible to run matlab on a remote server and control it using the matlab GUI from a thinclient?

Akin to what can be done with emacs with slime: the core services can run on a performace grade remote computer while I can edit and run code from emacs gui on an netbook.
Me and my colleagues often need to do some demos using machine
learning scripts running in matlab
This requires us to carry around heavy laptops.
Could we have the applications running on a remote server and access
it using the same matlab gui without running the scripts locally?
Remote desktop or similar solutions are not acceptable: multiple users would like to use the same server.
This is why none of the answers here were helpful
In my experience, the best way is with VNC. You can start a VNC server on the host machine, and then access this desktop remotely from anywhere with a VNC client. You can disconnect and reconnect at another time, and your desktop will still be there. Also, multiple users can all have different sessions going, or can access the same one. If you don't want each session to run a full blown desktop, you can configure it to be minimal. For security, it is recommended to use an SSH tunnel or similar.
The exact programs will vary based on your setup, but the things to google are bolded, above.
My setup is:
VNC server: vnc4server on a Ubuntu linux host.
VNC client: Chicken of the VNC for mac.
SSH tunnel: SSH Tunnel Manager for mac (although this can be done at the command line too).
Good luck!
EDIT: Here is a screenshot of a vncserver session I just started up on our cluster, with matlab running in it. I'm accessing it through the vnc client on my mac. Works great!
SSH with X-window forwarding will do the trick. It will get you the MATLAB screen you know and love but will be running everything on the remote computer. To do this, in a terminal with SSH (I like MobaXterm, though you can use Putty) you ssh via
ssh server.location.here -X
This will get you the terminal on the computer (after typing in a password), and in the terminal just type
matlab
and a MATLAB screen will show up. Note that opengl will be disabled, so your plots might not plot as fast, though you can still use gpu algorithms (i.e. cuda. Note you may need to run the command "COMPUTE=:0" before opening matlab if gpuDevice turns up empty for MATLAB's cuda).