When you need a web server in a hurry. http://unix4lyfe.org/darkhttpd/
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Tom Dryer 667edacaa3
Fix hung connection from consecutive requests (#7)
A client making quick consecutive requests with keep-alive, such as `ab`
with `-k`, can cause the connection to become hung.

This happens because of an optimization in `http_poll` function. When a
connection state becomes `DONE`, `httpd_poll` recycles the connection
and immediately calls `poll_recv_request`. However, it doesn't handle
this resulting in the connection state becoming `DONE` again. If this
occurs, the state stays in `DONE`, and the further calls to `httpd_poll`
ignore the connection.

Fix this by calling `poll_recv_request` in a loop until the state is no
longer `DONE`.

* Enable TCP_NODELAY optimization

It looks like `TCP_NODELAY` was disabled due to the bug fixed in the
previous commit. Enabling it substantially improves keep-alive
performance with `ab`:

Before:

```
Time per request:       0.272 [ms] (mean)
```

After:

```
Time per request:       0.033 [ms] (mean)
```

* Remove keep-alive optimization from `httpd_poll`

Benchmarking with `ab` shows that bypassing `select` for keep-alive
connections in the `DONE` state doesn't significantly impact
performance. Since this optimization previously caused a bug, remove it.
2021-06-14 11:44:55 +10:00
devel Improve make_safe_uri coverage. 2021-03-21 15:31:04 +11:00
.gitignore Add .gitignore. 2014-03-14 22:42:05 +11:00
darkhttpd.c Fix hung connection from consecutive requests (#7) 2021-06-14 11:44:55 +10:00
Dockerfile Dockerize (#3) 2021-04-03 18:08:52 +11:00
Makefile Dockerize (#3) 2021-04-03 18:08:52 +11:00
README.md Properly divide list "headers" and lists. (#4) 2021-04-08 11:32:56 +10:00
TODO Fix hung connection from consecutive requests (#7) 2021-06-14 11:44:55 +10:00

darkhttpd

https://unix4lyfe.org/darkhttpd/

When you need a web server in a hurry.

Features:

  • Simple to set up:
    • Single binary, no other files, no installation needed.
    • Standalone, doesn't need inetd or ucspi-tcp.
    • No messing around with config files - all you have to specify is the www root.
  • Written in C - efficient and portable.
  • Small memory footprint.
  • Event loop, single threaded - no fork() or pthreads.
  • Generates directory listings.
  • Supports HTTP GET and HEAD requests.
  • Supports Range / partial content. (try streaming music files or resuming a download)
  • Supports If-Modified-Since.
  • Supports Keep-Alive connections.
  • Supports IPv6.
  • Can serve 301 redirects based on Host header.
  • Uses sendfile() on FreeBSD, Solaris and Linux.
  • Can use acceptfilter on FreeBSD.
  • At some point worked on FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, Solaris.
  • ISC license.
  • suckless.org says darkhttpd sucks less.
  • Small Docker image (<100KB)

Security:

  • Can log accesses, including Referer and User-Agent.
  • Can chroot.
  • Can drop privileges.
  • Impervious to /../ sniffing.
  • Times out idle connections.
  • Drops overly long requests.

Limitations:

  • Only serves static content - no CGI.

How to build darkhttpd

Simply run make:

make

How to run darkhttpd

Serve /var/www/htdocs on the default port (80 if running as root, else 8080):

./darkhttpd /var/www/htdocs

Serve ~/public_html on port 8081:

./darkhttpd ~/public_html --port 8081

Only bind to one IP address (useful on multi-homed systems):

./darkhttpd ~/public_html --addr 192.168.0.1

Serve at most 4 simultaneous connections:

./darkhttpd ~/public_html --maxconn 4

Log accesses to a file:

./darkhttpd ~/public_html --log access.log

Chroot for extra security (you need root privs for chroot):

./darkhttpd /var/www/htdocs --chroot

Use default.htm instead of index.html:

./darkhttpd /var/www/htdocs --index default.htm

Add mimetypes - in this case, serve .dat files as text/plain:

$ cat extramime
text/plain  dat
$ ./darkhttpd /var/www/htdocs --mimetypes extramime

Drop privileges:

./darkhttpd /var/www/htdocs --uid www --gid www

Use acceptfilter (FreeBSD only):

kldload accf_http
./darkhttpd /var/www/htdocs --accf

Run in the background and create a pidfile:

./darkhttpd /var/www/htdocs --pidfile /var/run/httpd.pid --daemon

Web forward (301) requests for some hosts:

./darkhttpd /var/www/htdocs --forward example.com http://www.example.com \
  --forward secure.example.com https://www.example.com/secure

Web forward (301) requests for all hosts:

./darkhttpd /var/www/htdocs --forward example.com http://www.example.com \
  --forward-all http://catchall.example.com

Commandline options can be combined:

./darkhttpd ~/public_html --port 8080 --addr 127.0.0.1

To see a full list of commandline options, run darkhttpd without any arguments:

./darkhttpd

How to run darkhttpd in Docker

First, build the image.

docker build -t darkhttpd .

Then run using volumes for the served files and port mapping for access.

For example, the following would serve files from the current user's dev/mywebsite directory on http://localhost:8080/

docker run -p 8080:80 -v ~/dev/mywebsite:/var/www/htdocs:ro darkhttpd

Enjoy.