A minimal web server written in C.
- Fast and small
- Uses the linux sendfile to avoid buffering
- Low memory footprint and very few allocations
- Supports POST, PUT and PATCH by executing files
- Protection against ../ path attacks
- Only 18Kb when striped
- Vetted with valgrind
- Crypt;
- Shadow;
- A C compiler; &
- A POSIX compatible shell.
Simply run:
./build
To install ./build install will copy the executable to .local/bin/.
There must be a folder named web in the same directory as servrian,
containing at least a index.html file. The server will listen on port 8080
if no PORT env variable is present.
By default servrian will route requests using the configured root folder, the host header and the path; and will add a suffix depending on the accepted encodings. E.g.: root/host/path. If the same with ending in .gz or .br is found and the client sent them on the accept-encoding header then that compressed file is sent.
For POST, PUT and PATCH requests it is also added .sh at end and the file is executed, passing the method and the content encoding to the callee. The body is sent to standard input, the output generated is directly sent as response, so programs are responsible for the correct response, including headers.
Beware that this is a experimental feature and may contain bugs and security issues. Use with care.
Servrian leverages unix tools to handle authorization and authentication, for
most cases it should work out of the box. Whenever a file requested is not
publicly readable, this is, the file doesn't have the a+r flag, then servrian
checks for the Authorization HTTP header, if present it is used to authorize
using your system's /etc/passwd file, the same way you login into your shell.
If the header is not present status 401 is returned with a WWW-Authenticate
header, only the Basic method is supported now. For shadow passwords your
user must have read access to the shadow file.
Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.
Check the contributing file for details, but, in advance, it is pretty intuitive and straightforward.
- Compiling on MacOS with the default C compiler, clang, may give warnings, but compilation finishes without errors;
- You may need to specify the include path to the openssl library because it is, sometimes, in a different place.
- Compiling on Windows with Cygwin does not give any warning, but at run time there are several stack traces, I will investigate that but fixes are welcome.