Installing SageMath for multiple users?

asked 2017-05-04 05:42:58 -0500

dave559 gravatar image

I have been asked to look into installing SageMath on a server for use by multiple users (I am a sysadmin and not a mathematician). I had initially looked into this a couple of years ago, but then priorities were changed.

From the previous occasion, I recall that SageMath installation is generally from a tarball (or a possibly quite fearsome compilation from source), and that the SageMath notebook interface runs in the user's web browser. I seem to recall then that it would be difficult or impossible for more than one end user to run SageMath, as, when it opens a web browser, it is not aware of there actually being different end users on a multi-user server computer and the notebook interface would not be able to cope with this (without somehow running multiple web interfaces on separate network ports?). The SageMath documentation also rather seems to assume the use case of an individual user with sysadmin powers installing SageMath on their own personal computer for their own stand-alone personal use (if there is specific documentation about setup for multiple users, I have not yet found it, unfortunately).

Is it (easily) possible to install SageMath on a (Linux) server for multiple end users to be able to use it via the notebook interface, or would it realistically be substantially easier to consider the use of the SageMath Cloud service instead?

Thank you for any advice.

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From a sysadmin who does something with a lab case: "I know of at least one case, where a sysadm at a Finnish university does this. I have no idea how he fixes ssl, serves it publically, handles user registration, or what else he does to link it to their existing authentication system."

kcrisman gravatar imagekcrisman ( 2017-05-04 11:26:06 -0500 )edit

Naturally, one could also install one of the notebook interfaces - either the old sagenb server, or the new Jupyterhub (or whatever it's called now), the latter of which I know little about in terms of usability.

kcrisman gravatar imagekcrisman ( 2017-05-04 11:26:39 -0500 )edit

As a part of the question, the notebook interface is a must. But for my personal taste this is exactly what i do not want. On my machine is enough to have

$ which sage

and to start sage from the command line. The code can be easily typed in an editor (emacs, of course). And eclipse (with debugger) is all i need to be efficient. Do users really need more?

If yes...

dan_fulea gravatar imagedan_fulea ( 2017-05-04 12:49:54 -0500 )edit

Could you please tell if the users will be connected to the machine from theirr unix account, or if their only access to the server is via http(s) port 80/443 ?

tmonteil gravatar imagetmonteil ( 2017-05-07 15:36:34 -0500 )edit