Collaborative docs don't get you all the way to shared editing

[ianhi]

Description

For the use case of sharing a notebook on my laptop with a friend sitting nearby the instructions for shared editing https://jupyterlab.readthedocs.io/en/stable/user/rtc.html don't get me all the way to finish line.

In particular there are no instructions about how to set the server IP to something other than localhost so that I can accept incoming connections from a friends computer.

Reproduce

1. make a new conda env
2. pip install jupyterlab jupyterlab-link-share
3. jupyter lab --collaborative
4. use share link extension
5. get a link like: http://localhost:8888/lab/tree/Untitled1.ipynb?token=f5d7b1fefbdc92263371f4cbd813b6faaa8ca9bd205bc2f7

Expected behavior

1. have instructions in the docs page for how to set the server to accept all incoming IPs
2. link to insturctions on setting up a password etc
3. show a warning if started with --collaborative without an ip that will allow external connections.

[ianhi]

leaving as a bug as also because maybe the lack of a warning could be considered a bug?

[jasongrout]

For reference, you can do jupyter lab --ip="*" to open up to requests on all interfaces (with the appropriate warning that you really are opening up your computer to anyone that can connect to it...)

[ianhi]

(with the appropriate warning that you really are opening up your computer to anyone that can connect to it...)

I have a vague sense that this is bad - but I suspect that many many people are like me in that they know that this is "bad" but don't really understand in what ways/how to mitigate. For example when I hear that I'm left wondering how secure is jupyter server - like is it reasonable to trust that with a password/token and sharing with trusted parties I should be safe?

It would be great to include answers to things like that on that page as well, as well as perhaps brief instructions on how to get your actual IP address (which I suppose you need for this to work).

[jasongrout]

When you do --ip="*", it will print out several addresses you can use (or you can use something like ifconfig to see your local ip address)

https://jupyter-notebook.readthedocs.io/en/stable/public_server.html is a good reference. I would suggest, in addition to the default password/token measures, running the server with ssl (i.e., https instead of http).

[ianhi]

When you do --ip="*", it will print out several addresses you can use

Unfortunately doesn't look as though those will work I get these

    To access the server, open this file in a browser:
        file:///home/ian/.local/share/jupyter/runtime/jpserver-13789-open.html
    Or copy and paste one of these URLs:
        http://pop-os:8888/lab?token=17d4c9c0fcfcb24ad6b01198932a773b68818fe0bfabff2d
     or http://127.0.0.1:8888/lab?token=17d4c9c0fcfcb24ad6b01198932a773b68818fe0bfabff2d

or you can use something like ifconfig to see your local ip address)

This works! albeit with the caveat that you have to be on the same local network.

It would be awesome to shortcut this process of replacing the ip address when using the --collaborative flag. Maybe the links that are displayed could instead be rendered as:

for local use:
localhost:....

for sharing:
xxx.x.x.x.:...

[ianhi]

Some other things also seem to be undocumented such as the ?username and ?usercolor url params - and others that I may not know about.