By: Lars Wirzenius
2023-06-03 06:04
Ewww is a web server for static sites. It aims to be simple code, simple to configure, simple to keep running, and fast.
I have files in a directory, and a domain name pointing at the host. I want to serve the files using HTTPS. I want the TLS certificate to come from Let's Encrypt, but the web server doesn't need to be involved in its creation or renewal.
Same, but I have multiple domain names and each should serve from different directories and potentially have their own certificates.
Same, but some of the domain names are aliases for each other, and web clients should be redirected to the main one.
These are main, highlevel requirements. Detailed requirements are expressed as scenarios in the acceptance criteria chapter.
I don't need flexibility, and I don't want to configure anything that's not essential for this. Hardcoded assumptions are A-OK, if my life as someone running the program is easier.
At this point, I don't need support for If-Modified-Since
or ETag
.
or generating directory listings. I don't even care about MIME types
for now. Those will probably become important once I start using this
software for real, but for now I am trying to keep requirements
minimal.
This is a thin layer on top of the Rust warp crate. It does minimal processing for each request, and does not cache anything.
At startup, the server is provided with a single configuration file, which looks like this:
webroot: /srv/http/example.com hosts: - example.com - www.example.com ports: http: 80, 8080, 8888 https: 443, 4433 tls-cert: /etc/letsencrypt/live/certname/fullchain.pem tls-key: /etc/letsencrypt/live/certname/privkey.pem
The hosts are aliases; the first host on the list is the main one, the others automatically redirect to it.
The server is started via systemd or other mechanism that binds to privileged ports and handles process management: daemonization, restarting, etc. The configuration specifies for each port if plain HTTP or HTTPS is expected.
The server automatically listens on both port 80 (http) and 443
(https) so that it can serve the Let's Encrypt files. It only serves
the /.well-known/
path prefix in the webroot on port 80. Everything
else gets redirected to 443. I don't think I need to serve other
ports, but it's a handy feature to have for testing, so it shall be
supported at least for testing.
There is no "reload configuration". The server needs to be restarted. This is good enough for me, but may not be good enough for more serious use on sites with much traffic. Restarting should be fast.
Only the GET and HEAD methods are supported for HTTP: this is a server for static content only. Every other method returns an error.
given a self-signed certificate as snakeoil.pem, using key snakeoil.key and directory webroot and file webroot/foo.html from webpage.html and a running server using config file smoke.yaml when I request GET https://example.com/foo.html then I get status code 200 and header content-type is "text/html" and body is "this is your web page"
The following config file does not specify port numbers. The test scaffolding adds randomly chosen port numbers so that the test can run without being root.
webroot: webroot tls_cert: snakeoil.pem tls_key: snakeoil.key
this is your web page
given a self-signed certificate as snakeoil.pem, using key snakeoil.key and a running server using config file smoke.yaml and 1000 files in webroot when I request files under https://example.com in random order 100000 times then I can do at least 100 requests per second
given a self-signed certificate as snakeoil.pem, using key snakeoil.key and a running server using config file smoke.yaml when I request POST https://example.com/ then I get status code 405 and allow is "GET HEAD" when I request PUT https://example.com/ then I get status code 405 and allow is "GET HEAD" when I request DELETE https://example.com/ then I get status code 405 and allow is "GET HEAD"
The HTTP client must not be able to escape the webroot by using /../
in the request path.
given a self-signed certificate as snakeoil.pem, using key snakeoil.key given directory somedir/webroot given file somedir/secret.txt from secret.txt given file somedir/webroot/foo.html from webpage.html given a running server using config file somedir.yaml when I request GET https://example.com/foo.html then I get status code 200 then body is "this is your web page" when I request GET https://example.com/../secret.txt then I get status code 404
webroot: somedir/webroot tls_cert: snakeoil.pem tls_key: snakeoil.key
secret