How to run jupyter notebook in the background ? No need to keep one terminal for it

You can put the process into the background by using jupyter notebook --no-browser & disown. You can close the terminal afterwards and the process will still be running.

If you're using zsh you can also use a shorter version that does the same: jupyter notebook --no-browser &!.

To kill the process you can use pgrep jupyter to find the PID of the process and then kill 1234, replacing 1234 with the PID you just found.

Explanation

The --no-browser flag makes jupyter not open the browser automatically, it also works without this flag.

The & puts it into the background of the currently running shell.

The disown then removes the job from the background of the currently running shell and makes it run independently of the shell so that you may close it.

In the zsh version the &! is a built-in function that does the same as & disown.

Tmux is a good option available to run your Jupyter Notebook in the background.

I am running my Jupyter Notebook on a google cloud platform's VM instance with OS: Ubuntu 16.0. Where

1. I have to start SSH terminal
2. Then run the command: jupyter-notebook --no-browser --port=5000. It will start the Jupyter Notebook on port number 5000 on that VM instance
3. Then I open my browser and typer ip_addrees_of_my_instance:port_number which is 5000. It will open my Notebook in the browser.

Now up to this, all is good. But wait if the connection with my SSH terminal is terminated then the Jupyter Notebook stops immediately and hence I have to re-run it once again once the ssh terminal is restarted or from new ssh terminal.

To avoid this tmux is very good option.

Terminal Multiplexer (tmux) to Keep SSH Sessions Running in the background after ssh terminal is closed:

1. Start the ssh terminal
2. Type tmux. It will open a window in the same terminal.
3. Give command to start Jupyter Notebook here. Open Notebook.

Now if SSH terminal is closed/terminated it will keep running your notebook on the instance.

If the connection terminated then:

4. reconnect or open new ssh terminal. To see this Jupyter Server(which is kept running in the background) type: tmux attach command.

(Edited: changed "notebook" to "Jupyter Server")

Want to terminate tmux session:

5. Close the notebook. Then type exit in tmux-terminal-window. (update: If we close the notebook and use tmux detach command: it will exit from tmux session window/terminal without terminating/stopping the tmux sessions)

For more details please refer to this article: https://www.tecmint.com/keep-remote-ssh-sessions-running-after-disconnection/

Under *nix, the best way to run a program avoiding to be terminated by closing the terminal is to use nohup (no Hang up).

To start browser after running the server use the command:

nohup jupyter notebook &

And to start the server without opening the browser use the command:

nohup jupyter notebook --no-browser &

Note that you can shut down the jupyter server by using Quit in the upper right of the page of jupyter.

nohup puts as a parent of the process init(0), so it will not receive the "Hang Up" signal when the terminal is closed. All the output (standard output and standard error) are redirected to the file nohup.out nohup exists both as program and shell command, so if you have bash, check man page of bash to read more details.

This works for me when running a jupyter notebook server in the background.

$> nohup jupyter notebook --allow-root > error.log &

Stop the nohup jupyter notebook is simple.

First, find the pid of jupyter:

$> ps -ef| grep jupyter

e.g output like:

root 11417 2897 2 16:00 pts/0 00:04:29 /path/to/jupyter-notebook

Then kill the process:

$> kill -9 11417

You can also simplify this by storing the pid with:

$> nohup jupyter notebook --allow-root > error.log & echo $!> pid.txt

i.e, you can stop the notebook with:

$> kill -9 $(cat pid.txt)

An alternative way to stop the jupyter notebook is quit from the notebook page.

You can use screen to run it.

screen -A -m -d -S anyscreenname jupyter notebook --no-browser

This will start jupyter in a screen and you can access screen using screen commands.

Actually, jupyter notebook & alone is not enough, the backend will still log to your screen.
What you need is, cited from this issue

jupyter notebook > /path/to/somefileforlogging 2>&1 &

You can start up the notebook in a screen or tmux session. Makes it easy to check error messages, etc.

For remote machines jupyter notebook & works fine. However, it does not work on local machines when you close the terminal. For local machines use tmux.

Not real sophisticated but it gets the job done:

#! /bin/bash

#probably should change this to a case switch

if [ "$1" == "end" ]
    then
        echo
        echo "Shutting Down jupyter-notebook"
        killall jupyter-notebook
        echo
      exit 0
 fi

if [ "$1" == "-h" ]
   then
        echo   
        echo "To start  : jnote <port> [default 8888]" 
        echo "To end    : jnote end"
        echo "This help : jnote -h"
        echo
      exit 0
 fi

#cast from string
PORT=$(($1))

RETURN=0
PID=0

if [ "$PORT" == "0" ] || [ "$PORT" == "" ]; then PORT=8888; fi

echo
echo "Starting jupyter-notebook"

#background and headless, set port, allow colab access, capture log, don't open browser yet

nohup jupyter notebook \
 --NotebookApp.allow_origin='https://colab.research.google.com' \
 --port=$PORT --NotebookApp.port_retries=0 \
 --no-browser >~/jnote.log 2>&1 &

RETURN=$?
PID=$!

#Wait for bg process to complete - add as needed
sleep 2

if [ $RETURN == 0 ]
   then
        echo
        echo "Jupyter started on port $PORT and pid $PID"
        echo "Goto `cat ~/jnote.log | grep localhost: | grep -v NotebookApp`"
        echo
      exit 0
   else
        echo 
        echo "Jupyter failed to start on port $PORT and pid $PID with return code $RETURN"
        echo "see ~/jnote.log"
        echo
      exit $RETURN
 fi

jupyter notebook & >> disown  

put the process into the background by using jupyter notebook &
then type disown or disown <the process id>
you can close the terminal now

Detach Jupyter process from the controlling terminal and send all its input and output data to /dev/null which is a special device file that writes-off any data written to it.

jupyter notebook </dev/null &>/dev/null &

Lazy people like me would prefer to edit ~/.bash_aliases and create an alias:

alias jnote='jupyter notebook </dev/null &>/dev/null &'

Reference: https://www.tecmint.com/run-linux-command-process-in-background-detach-process/

As suggested by one of the users, using jupyter notebook & solves the issue. Regarding the comments stating that it kills the kernel after closing the terminal, probably you are using jupyter-notebook &.

If you are using iTerm2 software, first you need to set:

brew shellenv

Then start jupyter in nohup:

eval $(/usr/local/bin/brew shellenv)

nohup jupyter notebook &