[SOLVED] Connect Google colab to a runtime on a Google Compute Engine instance

Issue

I am trying to connect a jupyter notebook on Google colab to a runtime on GCP EC2 instance. I followed this colab doc instructions Link

Steps taken:

• Set up a Jupyter server on my local

  pip install jupyter_http_over_ws && jupyter serverextension enable --py jupyter_http_over_ws
  
  jupyter notebook \
   --NotebookApp.allow_origin='https://colab.research.google.com' \
   --port=8888 \
   --NotebookApp.port_retries=0
  

• Create and start a EC2 instance on GCP

• SSH into EC2 instance and forward local port using:

  gcloud beta compute ssh --zone "europe-west2-c" "<ec2-instance-name>" --project "<project-name>" -- -L 8888:localhost:8888
  

Error Message from trying to forward the port:

bind [127.0.0.1]:8888: Address already in use
channel_setup_fwd_listener_tcpip: cannot listen to port: 8888
Could not request local forwarding.

I also tried connecting the ec2 instance directly to colab but I was unable to. For the final step, I am suppose to copy the Jupyter url to the colab local runtime. How can I fix this?

Solution

I figured it out.

Steps:

• Start instance

• Connect to instance and forward port on remote instance to local machine

  gcloud beta compute ssh --zone "<zone>" "<ec2-instance-name>" --project "<project-name>" -- -L 8888:localhost:8888
  

• Install jupyter notebook and jupyter_http_over_ws if you dont have it install on the remote instance already.

• Then enable jupyter_http_over_ws:

  jupyter serverextension enable --py jupyter_http_over_ws
  

• Start Jupyter server on remote instance

  jupyter notebook \
   --NotebookApp.allow_origin='https://colab.research.google.com' \
   --port=8888 \
   --NotebookApp.port_retries=0
  

• Copy server url to colab

Answered By - DKMDebugin