Browse above starting folder

[amueller]

I frequently run into issues (when giving workshops) of people opening a jupyter notebook in one folder, and trying to browse to another folder that is somewhere above it in the folder structure.
That's currently impossible with the jupyter file browser (not sure what your name for that view is).

Is that a conscious design choice?
If so, why? Or what is in the way of implementing this?
Is this a security feature?

Thanks!

[blink1073]

Idle thought: this could be solved by having a switch (and config option) that starts the server itself in the user's home directory, but then changes to the directory where the command is launched for the tree view.

[takluyver]

It is deliberate, and it is a sort-of security measure. We don't want to expose your whole filesystem over HTTP. It's not a real security boundary, because someone with full access to the server can start a kernel and read files through that, but it means someone needs more than a simple HTTP GET to read files above the directory where you launched it.

[amueller]

Yeah that was sort-of my expectation.
How do you feel about changing the behavior for a local-only server? Too magic?

There could be an "read anywhere if local" config flag (that I would have like to be on by default because I'm mostly thinking about beginners).

[takluyver]

I don't want to assume that even a server running on loopback is totally safe. We recently had to fix a nasty issue which could potentially have let a webpage attack a local server through the browser. That also addressed a long-standing concern about other users on the same system using your server. Those examples are hopefully no longer problems, but I don't want to rely entirely on an outer shell of defenses.

[amueller]

Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.

FYI I asked (before I opened this) the anaconda folks to make the startup menu "Jupyter Notebook" button launch jupyter in the homefolder. That fix will probably solve most of my use-case.

[takluyver]

Yep, nbopen also launches has a default option to launch a notebook server in the home folder.

[10247bit]

So, is their anyway to open jupyter notebook located in a directory other than the present working directory?
or
I have to start another terminal with the directory having notebook as home directory

[takluyver]

To control it temporarily, run jupyter notebook --notebook-dir /path/to/wherever. To set it for every launch, search for notebook_dir in the config file.

[Madhu94]

@IntenseRave @takluyver #351 has a related discussion, but it ended in deciding to give the users a way to type in file paths as a start.

(I'll get started on it in a week or two :))

[yoderj]

@takluyver On Windows, this only works if you are running Jupyter Notebook from the command prompt. If you want to change it when launching from the Start Menu, follow this Stack Overflow answer