Recently I've fallen in love with the IPython Notebook. It's the Python REPL on steroids and I've probably just scratched the surface of what it can actually do. This will be a short post because long posts make me feel pain when I think about blogging more again. This is also really more about setting up launchctl than IPython, but hopefully that's useful too.

Starting it from the command line is kind of a pain (it tries to save .ipynb files in your current directory, it warns you to save files before closing tabs) so I thought I'd just set it up to run in the background each time I run ipython. Here's how you can get that set up.

Create a virtualenv with iPython

First, you need to install the ipython binary, and the other packages you need to run IPython Notebook.

    # Install virtualenvwrapper, then source it
    pip install virtualenvwrapper
    source /path/to/virtualenvwrapper.sh

mkvirtualenv ipython
pip install ipython tornado pyzmq

Starting IPython When Your Mac Boots

Open a text editor and add the following:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
    <plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
      <key>Label</key>
      <string>com.kevinburke.ipython</string>
      <key>ProgramArguments</key>
      <array>
          <string>/Users/kevin/.envs/ipython/bin/ipython</string>
          <string>notebook</string>
      </array>
      <key>RunAtLoad</key>
      <true/>
      <key>StandardOutPath</key>
      <string>/Users/kevin/var/log/ipython.log</string>
      <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
      <string>/Users/kevin/var/log/ipython.err.log</string>
      <key>ServiceDescription</key>
      <string>ipython notebook runner</string>
      <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
      <string>/Users/kevin/.ipython_notebooks</string>
    </dict>
    </plist>

You will need to replace the word kevin with your name and relevant file locations on your file system. I also save my notebooks in a directory called .ipython_notebooks in my home directory, you may want to add that as well.

Save that in /Library/LaunchDaemons/<yourname>.ipython.plist. Then change the owner to root:

sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/<yourname>.ipython.plist

Finally load it:

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/<yourname>.ipython.plist

If everything went ok, IPython should open in a tab. If it didn't go okay, check /var/log/system.log for errors, or one of the two logfiles specified in your plist.

Additional Steps

That's it! I've also found it really useful to run an nginx redirecter locally, as well as a new rule in /etc/hosts, so I can visit http://ipython and get redirected to my notebooks. But that is a topic for a different blog post.

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