How can I run Tensorboard on a remote server?

Question

I'm new to Tensorflow and would greatly benefit from some visualizations of what I'm doing. I understand that Tensorboard is a useful visualization tool, but how do I run it on my remote Ubuntu machine?

Answer 1

Here is what I do to avoid the issues of making the remote server accept your local external IP:

• when I ssh into the machine, I use the option -L to transfer the port 6006 of the remote server into the port 16006 of my machine (for instance): ssh -L 16006:127.0.0.1:6006 olivier@my_server_ip

What it does is that everything on the port 6006 of the server (in 127.0.0.1:6006) will be forwarded to my machine on the port 16006.

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• You can then launch tensorboard on the remote machine using a standard tensorboard --logdir log with the default 6006port
• On your local machine, go to http://127.0.0.1:16006 and enjoy your remote TensorBoard.

Answer 2

You can port-forward with another ssh command that need not be tied to how you are connecting to the server (as an alternative to the other answer). Thus, the ordering of the below steps is arbitrary.

1. from your local machine, run

   ssh -N -f -L localhost:16006:localhost:6006 <user@remote>

2. on the remote machine, run:

   tensorboard --logdir <path> --port 6006

3. Then, navigate to (in this example) http://localhost:16006 on your local machine.

(explanation of ssh command:

-N : no remote commands

-f : put ssh in the background

-L <machine1>:<portA>:<machine2>:<portB> :

forward <machine1>:<portA> (local scope) to <machine2>:<portB> (remote scope)