NAME
bozohttpd
- hyper text transfer protocol version 1.1 daemon
SYNOPSIS
bozohttpd
[-EGHVXdefhnqsu]
[-C suffix cgihandler]
[-I port]
[-L prefix script]
[-M suffix type encoding encoding11]
[-m version]
[-P pidfile]
[-R readme]
[-S version]
[-T type timeout]
[-U username]
[-Z cert privkey]
[-c cgibin]
[-i address]
[-p pubdir]
[-t chrootdir]
[-v virtualroot]
[-x index]
[-z ciphers]
slashdir
[myname]
DESCRIPTION
The
bozohttpd
program reads a
HTTP
request from the standard input, and sends a reply to the standard output.
Besides ~user translation and virtual hosting support (see below), all file
requests are from
slashdir
directory.
The server uses
myname
as its name, which defaults to the local hostname, obtained from
gethostname(3)
(but see the
-v
option for virtual hosting.)
bozohttpd
writes logs to
syslog(3)
using the ftp facility (but see the
-s
option for testing and the
-q
option for suppressing this.)
bozohttpd
is designed to be small, simple and relatively featureless,
hopefully increasing its security.
OPTIONS
The following options are available:
- -b
-
Enables daemon mode, where
bozohttpd
detaches from the current terminal, running in the background and
servicing HTTP requests.
- -C suffix cgihandler
-
Adds a new CGI handler program for a particular file type.
The
suffix
should be any normal file suffix, and the
cgihandler
should be a full path to an interpreter.
This option is the only way to enable CGI programs that exist
outside of the cgibin directory to be executed.
Multiple
-C
options may be passed.
- -c cgibin
-
Enables the CGI/1.1 interface.
The
cgibin
directory is expected to contain the CGI programs to be used.
bozohttpd
looks for URL's in the form of
/cgi-bin/<scriptname>
where
<scriptname>
is a valid CGI program in the
cgibin
directory.
In other words, all CGI URL's must begin with
/cgi-bin/.
Note that the CGI/1.1 interface is available with
~user
translation using
-E
switch.
- -d
-
Enables debug support.
- -E
-
Enables CGI/1.1 interface for
~user
translation.
Note that enabling this support implies that users can run commands
as the web server user.
This may have security implications.
- -e
-
Causes
bozohttpd
to not clear the environment when used with either the
-t
or
-U
options.
- -f
-
Stops the
-b
flag from detaching
bozohttpd
from the tty and going into the background.
This implies the
-b
flag.
- -G
-
Get the
bozohttpd
version string, print it on standard output, and exit.
- -H
-
Causes directory index mode to hide files and directories
that start with a period, except for
...
Also see
-X.
- -I port
-
Causes
bozohttpd
to use
port
instead of the default
``http”
port.
When used with the
-b
option, it changes the bound port.
Otherwise it forces redirections to use this port instead of the
value obtained via
getsockname(2).
- -i address
-
Causes
address
to be used as the address to bind daemon mode.
If otherwise unspecified, the address used to bind is derived from the
myname,
which defaults to the name returned by
gethostname(3).
Only the last
-i
option is used.
This option is only valid with the
-b
option.
- -L prefix script
-
Adds a new Lua script for a particular prefix.
The
prefix
should be an arbitrary text, and the
script
should be a full path to a Lua script.
Multiple
-L
options may be passed.
A separate Lua state is created for each prefix.
The Lua script can register callbacks using the
httpd.register_handler('<name>', function) Lua function,
which will trigger the execution of the Lua function
function
when a URL in the form
http://<hostname>//
is being accessed.
The function is passed three tables as arguments, the server
environment, the request headers, and the decoded query string
plus any data that was sent as application/x-www-form-urlencoded.
- -M suffix type encoding encoding11
-
Adds a new entry to the table that converts file suffixes to
content type and encoding.
This option takes four additional arguments containing
the file prefix, its
``Content-Type”,
``Content-Encoding”,
and
``Content-Encoding”
for HTTP/1.1 connections, respectively.
If any of these are a single dash
(``-”),
the empty string is used instead.
Multiple
-M
options may be passed.
- -m version
-
Set the minimum supported SSL protocol
version.
The valid values of
version
are
``TLSv1.1”,
``TLSv1.2”,
and
``TLSv1.3”.
The default version is
``TLSv1.1”.
- -n
-
Stops
bozohttpd
from doing IP address to name resolution of remote hosts.
This affects the
REMOTE_HOST
environment variable for CGI programs and Lua scripts.
- -P pidfile
-
Causes
bozohttpd
to create a PID file in
pidfile
when run in daemon mode with the
-b
option.
- -p pubdir
-
Changes the default user directory for
/~user/
translations from
``public_html”
to
pubdir.
- -q
-
Quiet mode - no log entries generated.
- -R readme
-
When directory indexing is enabled, include the contents of the file
readme
in the footer of the directory index.
- -S version
-
Sets the internal server version to
version.
- -s
-
Forces logging to be set to stderr always.
- -T type timeout
-
Set the timeout for
type
to
timeout.
The valid values of
type
are
``ssl timeout”,
``initial timeout”,
``header timeout”,
and
``request timeout”.
The default values are 30 seconds, 30 seconds, 10 seconds and 600 seconds,
respectively.
- -t chrootdir
-
Makes
bozohttpd
chroot to the specified directory
before answering requests.
Every other path should be specified relative
to the new root, if this option is used.
Note that the current environment
is normally replaced with an empty environment with this option, unless the
-e
option is also used.
- -U username
-
Causes
bozohttpd
to switch to the user and the groups of
username
after initialization.
This option, like
-t
above, causes
bozohttpd
to clear the environment unless the
-e
option is given.
- -u
-
Enables the transformation of Uniform Resource Locators of
the form
/~user/
into the directory
~user/public_html
(but see the
-p
option above).
- -V
-
Sets the backup virtual host directory to the
slashdir
argument.
If no directory exists in
virtualroot
for the request, then
slashdir
will be used.
The default behavior is to return 404 (Not Found.)
- -v virtualroot
-
Enables virtual hosting support.
Directories in
virtualroot
will be searched for a matching virtual host name, when parsing
the HTML request.
If a matching name is found, it will be used
as both the server's real name,
[myname],
and as the
slashdir.
See the
EXAMPLES
section for an example of using this option.
- -X
-
Enables directory indexing.
A directory index will be generated only when the default file (i.e.
index.html
normally) is not present.
- -x index
-
Changes the default file read for directories from
``index.html”
to
index.
- -Z certificate_path privatekey_path
-
Sets the path to the server certificate file and the private key file
in PEM format.
It also causes
bozohttpd
to start SSL mode.
- -z ciphers
-
Sets the list of SSL ciphers (see
SSL_CTX_set_cipher_list(3)).
Note that in
bozohttpd
versions 20031005 and prior that supported the
-C
and
-M
options, they took a single space-separated argument that was parsed.
since version 20040828, they take multiple options (2 in the case of
-C
and 4 in the case of
-M.)
INETD CONFIGURATION
As
bozohttpd
uses
inetd(8)
by default to process incoming TCP connections for HTTP requests
(but see the
-b
option),
bozohttpd
has little internal networking knowledge.
(Indeed, you can run it on the command line with little change of
functionality.)
A typical
inetd.conf(5)
entry would be:
http stream tcp nowait:600 _httpd /usr/libexec/httpd httpd /var/www
http stream tcp6 nowait:600 _httpd /usr/libexec/httpd httpd /var/www
This would serve web pages from
/var/www
on both IPv4 and IPv6 ports.
The
:600
changes the
requests per minute to 600, up from the
inetd(8)
default of 40.
Using the
NetBSD
inetd(8),
you can provide multiple IP-address based HTTP servers by having multiple
listening ports with different configurations.
NOTES
This server supports the
HTTP/0.9,
HTTP/1.0,
and
HTTP/1.1
standards.
Support for these protocols is very minimal and many optional features are
not supported.
bozohttpd
can be compiled without
CGI support (NO_CGIBIN_SUPPORT),
user transformations (NO_USER_SUPPORT),
directory index support (NO_DIRINDEX_SUPPORT),
daemon mode support (NO_DAEMON_MODE),
dynamic MIME content (NO_DYNAMIC_CONTENT),
Lua support (NO_LUA_SUPPORT),
and SSL support (NO_SSL_SUPPORT)
by defining the listed macros when building
.
HTTP BASIC AUTHORIZATION
bozohttpd
has support for HTTP Basic Authorization.
If a file named
.htpasswd
exists in the directory of the current request,
bozohttpd
will restrict access to documents in that directory
using the RFC 2617 HTTP
``Basic”
authentication scheme.
Note:
This does not recursively protect any sub-directories.
The
.htpasswd
file contains lines delimited with a colon containing
user names and passwords hashed with
crypt(3),
for example:
heather:$1$pZWI4tH/$DzDPl63i6VvVRv2lJNV7k1
jeremy:A.xewbx2DpQ8I
On
NetBSD,
the
pwhash(1)
utility may be used to generate hashed passwords.
While
bozohttpd
distributed with
NetBSD
has support for HTTP Basic Authorization enabled by default,
in the portable distribution it is excluded.
Compile
bozohttpd
with
``-DDO_HTPASSWD”
on the compiler command line to enable this support.
It may require linking with the crypt library, using
``-lcrypt”.
BLOCKLIST SUPPORT
On
NetBSD,
bozohttpd
supports
blocklistd(8)
by default.
The support can be disabled with the
``-DNO_BLOCKLIST_SUPPORT”
compilation option.
Upon occurrence,
bozohttpd
reports two HTTP status codes to
blocklistd(8)
as failures:
401
(``Unauthorized”)
and
403
(``Forbidden”) .
Of these,
401
is the one received upon authorization failure with the
HTTP Basic Authorization mechanism.
A successful authorization decreases the counter kept by
blocklistd(8).
Note that the implementation of the HTTP Basic Authorization mechanism
uses a redirection; a status code
401
is always initially received.
Therefore, a single authorization failure of
.htpasswd
is reported as two failures to
blocklistd(8),
but no failures are recorded upon successful authorization
due to the decrease of the failure counter.
SSL SUPPORT
bozohttpd
has support for TLSv1.1 and TLSv1.2 protocols that are included by
default.
It requires linking with the crypto and ssl library, using
``-lcrypto -lssl”.
To disable SSL SUPPORT compile
bozohttpd
with
``-DNO_SSL_SUPPORT”
on the compiler command line.
To have an enforced redirect, such as http to https, create a shadow
directory root that contains a
.bzabsredirect
file that points to the real target.
COMPRESSION
bozohttpd
supports a very basic form of compression.
bozohttpd
will serve the requested file postpended with
``.gz”
if it exists, it is readable, the client requested gzip compression, and
the client did not make a ranged request.
FILES
bozohttpd
looks for a couple of special files in directories that allow certain features
to be provided on a per-directory basis.
The
.htpasswd
file is used by HTTP basic authorization.
If a
.bzredirect
symbolic link is found,
bozohttpd
will perform a smart redirect to the target of this symlink.
The target is assumed to live on the same server.
If target starts with slash then absolute redirection is performed,
otherwise it's handled as relative.
If a
.bzabsredirect
symbolic link is found,
bozohttpd
will redirect to the absolute URL pointed to by this symlink.
This is useful to redirect to different servers.
Two forms of redirection are supported - symbolic link without schema will use
http://
as default i.e. link to
NetBSD.org
will redirect to
http://NetBSD.org/
Otherwise provided schema will be used i.e. symbolic link to
ftp://NetBSD.org/
will redirect to the provided URL.
If a
.bzremap
file is found at the root of a (virtual) server, it is expected to contain
rewrite mappings for URLs.
These remappings are performed internally in the server before authentication
happens and can be used to hide implementation details, like the CGI handler
specific suffix for non cgi scripts in authorized directories.
The map file consists of lines two paths separated by a colon, where the left
side needs to exactly match a (sub) path of the request and will be replaced
by the right side.
The first match always wins.
A
.bzremap
file could look like this:
/nic/update:/auth-dir/updipv4.pl
The remap file should be short, access to it is slow and needs to happen
on each request.
If a request path needs to include a colon
(amp;:)
character, it can be escaped
with a backslash
(\)
The right hand side of the colon is always used verbatim, no escape sequences
are interpreted.
EXAMPLES
To configure set of virtual hosts, one would use an
inetd.conf(5)
entry like:
http stream tcp nowait:600 _httpd /usr/libexec/httpd httpd -v /var/vroot /var/www
and inside
/var/vroot
create a directory (or a symlink to a directory) with the same name as
the virtual host, for each virtual host.
Lookups for these names are done in a case-insensitive manner, and may
include the port number part of the request, allowing for distinct
virtual hosts on the same name.
To use
bozohttpd
with PHP, one must use the
-C
option to specify a CGI handler for a particular file type.
Typically this will be like:
httpd -C .php /usr/pkg/bin/php-cgi /var/www
Note that a plain script interpreter can not be used directly as a cgihandler,
as there are no command line options passed from
bozohttpd
to avoid security issues.
If no CGI-aware wrapper exists, a simple shell script like the following
might do.
It would be invoked like:
httpd -C .pl /www-scripts/bin/run.perl /var/www
and the script could look like:
#! /bin/sh
if [ -r "$SCRIPT_FILENAME" -a -x "$SCRIPT_FILENAME" ]; then
exec /usr/pkg/bin/perl "$SCRIPT_FILENAME"
fi
exit 1
SEE ALSO
inetd.conf(5),
inetd(8)
HISTORY
bozohttpd
was first written in perl, based on another perl http server
called
``tinyhttpd”.
It was then rewritten from scratch in perl, and then once again in C.
From
``bozohttpd”
version 20060517, it has been integrated into
NetBSD.
The focus has always been simplicity and security, with minimal features
and regular code audits.
This manual documents
bozohttpd
version 20240126.
AUTHORS
bozohttpd
was written by
Matthew R. Green
<[email protected]>.
The large list of contributors includes:
- -
Christoph Badura
<[email protected]>
provided Range: header support
- -
Marc Balmer
<[email protected]>
added Lua support for dynamic content creation
- -
Sean Boudreau
<[email protected]>
provided a security fix for virtual hosting
- -
Julian Coleman
<[email protected]>
provided an IPv6 bugfix
- -
Chuck Cranor
<[email protected]>
provided cgi-bin support fixes, and more
- -
Alistair G. Crooks
<[email protected]>
cleaned up many internal interfaces, made
bozohttpd
linkable as a library and provided the Lua binding
- -
DEGROOTE Arnaud
<[email protected]>
provided a fix for daemon mode
- -
Andrew Doran
<[email protected]>
provided directory indexing support
- -
Roland Dowdeswell
<[email protected]>
added support for serving gzipped files and better SSL handling
- -
Per Ekman
<[email protected]>
provided a fix for a minor (non-security) buffer overflow condition
- -
<[email protected]>
provided fixes for some bad request parsing
- -
Jun-ichiro itojun Hagino, KAME
<[email protected]>
provided initial IPv6 support
- -
Martin Husemann
<[email protected]>
provided .bzabsredirect and .bzredir support, fixed various
redirection issues and more
- -
Arto Huusko
<[email protected]>
provided fixes cgi-bin
- -
Roland Illig
<[email protected]>
provided some off-by-one fixes
- -
Zak Johnson
<[email protected]>
provided cgi-bin enhancements
- -
Nicolas Jombart
<[email protected]>
provided fixes for HTTP basic authorization support
- -
Antti Kantee
<[email protected]>
provided fixes for HTTP basic authorization support
- -
Thomas Klausner
<[email protected]>
provided many fixes and enhancements for the man page
- -
Mateusz Kocielski
<[email protected]>
fixed memory leaks, various issues with userdir support,
information disclosure issues, added support for using CGI handlers
with directory indexing, found several security issues and provided
various other fixes
- -
Arnaud Lacombe
<[email protected]>
provided some clean up for memory leaks
- -
Johnny Lam
<[email protected]>
provided man page fixes
- -
Dennis Lindroos
<[email protected]>
provided a cgi-bin fix
- -
Jared McNeill
<[email protected]>
added support for readme in directory indexing
- -
Julio Merino
<[email protected]>
Added the
-P
option (pidfile support) and provided some man page fixes
- -
Luke Mewburn
<[email protected]>
provided many various fixes, including cgi-bin fixes and enhancements,
HTTP basic authorization support and much code clean up
- -
Sunil Nimmagadda
<[email protected]>
provided runtime TLS version control
- -
Rajeev V. Pillai
<[email protected]>
provided several fixes for virtual hosting and directory indexing and
fixes for CGI
- -
Jeremy C. Reed
<[email protected]>
provided several clean up fixes, and man page updates
- -
Scott Reynolds
<[email protected]>
provided various fixes
- -
Tyler Retzlaff
<[email protected]>
provided SSL support, cgi-bin fixes and much other random other stuff
- -
rudolf
<[email protected]>
provided minor compile fixes and a CGI content map fix
- -
Steve Rumble
<[email protected]>
provided the
-V
option
- -
Jukka Ruohonen
<[email protected]>
provided support for
blocklistd(8)
- -
Thor Lancelot Simon
<[email protected]>
enhanced cgi-bin support
- -
Joerg Sonnenberger
<[email protected]>
implemented If-Modified-Since support
- -
Kimmo Suominen
<[email protected]>
removed obsolete
.bzdirect
handling
- -
ISIHARA Takanori
<[email protected]>
provided a man page fix
- -
Holger Weiss
<[email protected]>
provided http authorization fixes
- -
<[email protected]>
provided chroot and change-to-user support, and other various fixes
- -
S.P.Zeidler
<[email protected]>
fixed several SSL shutdown issues
- -
Coyote Point provided various CGI fixes
There are probably others I have forgotten (let me know if you care)
Please send all updates to
bozohttpd
to
<[email protected]>
or
<[email protected]>
for inclusion in future releases.
BUGS
bozohttpd
does not handle HTTP/1.1 chunked input from the client yet.