11 ms·

Sherver: Bash lightweight web server

163 points by turrini 5y ago

BossingAround 5y ago
> I didn't want to install and configure Apache or nGinx. In fact, I didn't want any configuration. Personally, in that case, I'd use: python3 -m http.server
- rascul 5y ago
  There are many similar options. I think that awhile ago there may have been a list of one liner web servers posted to HN. Either way, I've been using python's for years and it's just muscle memory now.
  - em500 5y ago
    Big list of http static servers: https://gist.github.com/willurd/5720255 https://gist.github.com/willurd/5720255
- nickjj 5y ago
  That's my goto solution for a simple server if I'm testing something locally but it has issues dealing with concurrent requests in its simple form. For example I ran a simple hello world test service on Kubernetes once using Python's http.server. Just having 3 Kubernetes health checks happen on regular intervals would routinely cause the server to respond with errors. I think what ends up happening is if you have 2 requests coming in within a short enough period of time one of them will fail. You have to use a more complicated threaded http server if you want a zero dependency solution.
- adamddev1 5y ago
  `npm install -g live-server` Also works great (but a bit bulkier sure).
montroser 5y ago
Fantastic. For a more sinatra-inspired take, see also https://github.com/guigo2k/ganesh https://github.com/guigo2k/ganesh
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
vkazanov 5y ago
One those things that is s scarily beautiful
medv 5y ago
It is a socat server, not bash. Basically a bash script calling socat. Definitely not “pure”.
- prussian 5y ago
  Someone beat me to it. When I think of pure bash, I don't really think of invoking anything that isn't a builtin or a grammatical feature of bash. If socat is fair-play, almost anything you can spawn on a shell should count then. edit: on top of that, I already found a perl script utility in the repo: https://github.com/remileduc/sherver/blob/master/scripts/utils/mimetype https://github.com/remileduc/sherver/blob/master/scripts/uti...
  - fragbait65 5y ago
    I think I'll just write something similar and wrap Apache with a shell scrip, claim that it's a web server written in bash, post it here and see what reaction I get, just for shits and giggles.
    - prussian 5y ago
      Here: https://github.com/remileduc/sherver/issues/1 https://github.com/remileduc/sherver/issues/1 that way you can have HTTP/1.1 support even with arbitrary output lengths. I was planning on sending this to the linked repo so the owner doesn't need to use HTTP/1.0. EDIT: changed link to the github issue I created with inlined utility.
  - bluetomcat 5y ago
    Jokingly, "sudo service apache2 start" may also be considered pure Bash :-)
    - fragbait65 5y ago
      Exactly!
- junon 5y ago
throwaway984393 5y ago
They reinvented CGI scripts but didn't actually implement CGI. Could have implicitly supported a lot of apps by default. There's some pretty decent CGI libraries for Bash, too. Personally I use busybox's httpd (which does support CGI) for a small portable web server.
laumars 5y ago
> I didn't want to install and configure Apache or nGinx. In fact, I didn't want any configuration. If you ignore all of the manual installation instructions and any dev time you took to create this, then sure. I’m not going to argue that the author should have used something else instead though. It’s a personal project used purely on an internet system of his house. For those kinds it projects “because I could” is as good a reason as any. I just think more authors should be honest and say “I just did it because it seemed fun at the time”
- tjoff 5y ago
  Manual instructions and dev time doesn't necessarily pollute the state of the machine though and are harder to replicate, which is how I would interpret it.
  - laumars 5y ago
    Not having your application packaged up for quick removal strikes me as more polluting. And I don’t really see how an independent solution with almost no documentation and zero configuration management support (eg Ansible) is easier to replicate than a battle tested industry standard with widespread support. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against building things for fun. But the technical arguments made for why this is preferable over an established solution doesn’t stack up.
    - tjoff 5y ago
      I do. Just as I would use this (would look into it more first though), the netcat trick mentioned here or python3 -m http.server over ever considering installing Ansible and/or nginx/apache. Totally different use case though.
      - laumars 5y ago
        If I was rolling my own and concerned about polluting, I’d favour a language like Rust or Go because I then don’t need to install the Python runtime, have random undocumented dependencies for the bash etc. Or I’d use Docker. But as said before, there’s no wrong answer here since it’s just a hobby project running on a HTPC.
montroser 5y ago
For the occasional service where you are essentially just wrapping an existing binary, a bash server behind uwsgi can be totally sensible.
remote 5y ago
Kudos for scripting a great hack in BASH. Since the title reads "pure bash" however I was expecting to see an implementation using builtin bash features such as /dev/tcp. Have you considered solving this problem using BASH builtin support for TCP?
- rascul 5y ago
  I recall that bash can't create a server socket, because bash doesn't bind().
IceWreck 5y ago
If this is pure bash then so is ``` caddy file-server --browse --listen :80 ```
rascul 5y ago
This seems like an odd usage of cat and command substitution to me: HEAD_TEMPLATE=$(cat <<EOF <title>Sherver example</title> <meta name="description" content="Sherver example"> EOF ) https://github.com/remileduc/sherver/blob/master/scripts/index.sh#L21 https://github.com/remileduc/sherver/blob/master/scripts/ind...
- junon 5y ago
  It achieves multiline block text in bash, which is otherwise a PITA to reason about. It can keep certain scripts cleaner, especially since `cat` is often inlined, without process spawning.
  - steerablesafe 5y ago
    > especially since `cat` is often inlined, without process spawning. That would be surprising. How would that work? `cat` is definitely not a bash built-in.
    - junon 5y ago
      Cat is not a specified built-in but many implementations do build it in to speed up scripts that use it quite heavily. Other examples include `which`, `time`, `echo`, etc. They're usually promoted to built-ins when it's clear that's the intended command to run, but there are still analogs on the PATH if need-be - I'm not sure exactly how bash would detect a non-standard executable there to know when it's unsafe to promote to a built-in, though. For example with echo: $ bash -c 'echo hi' hi $ strace bash -c 'echo hi' | grep 'exec' execve("/usr/bin/bash", ["bash", "-c", "echo hi"], 0x7fffe264aad0 /* 24 vars */) = 0 $ strace bash -c '$(which echo) hi' | grep 'exec' execve("/usr/bin/bash", ["bash", "-c", "$(which echo) hi"], 0x7fffe36c6cd0 /* 24 vars */) = 0 execve("/usr/bin/echo", ["/usr/bin/echo", "hi"], 0x7fffe2e16ff0 /* 25 vars */) = 0 In fact for me, `cat` always gets inlined, even if I call it with its full path or with `which cat`. There are cases where the built-in and the actual executable differ - the most prominent case being `time`. The built-in does not have the command line arguments to print out things like pre-empted scheduling (forced context swiches). $ time --help --help: command not found $ /usr/bin/time --help Usage: /usr/bin/time [-apvV] [-f format] [-o file] [--append] [--verbose] [--portability] [--format=format] [--output=file] [--version] [--quiet] [--help] command [arg...]
Brian_K_White 5y ago
Ah, no. Bold claim unrealized. Immediately I see many unnecessary forks and externals to do things that bash actually can do itself.
_wldu 5y ago
Here's my small webserver: #!/bin/bash while : ; do cat conference.txt | nc -l 80; done Here's the story behind it: https://www.go350.com/posts/finding-a-hacked-server/ https://www.go350.com/posts/finding-a-hacked-server/
- Tepix 5y ago
  I liked the story and the impromptu web server! Two comments: - using "ping -a" creates an audible ping so you can find the server if you're by yourself without having to look at the screen. - No need for cat: while :; do nc -l 80 < conference.txt; done
  - vincnetas 5y ago
    TIL. thanx for -a.
  - _wldu 5y ago
    Interesting. I don't hear anything when I use the -a flag.
    - thanatos519 5y ago
      Let's check with "reveal codes": $ ping -a 127.0.0.1 | less PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.029 ms^G 64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.023 ms^G Looks like you need a terminal that has a BEL sound.
    - vesinisa 5y ago
      It just echoes a Bell character to your terminal. Make sure your terminal emulator supports it, and is configured properly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_character https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_character
    - rzzzt 5y ago
      Windows Terminal shows a "visual bell" in the tab bar whenever BEL is emitted (even though I have it set to "audible" in advanced settings of the profile, hmm). Edit: Uhm, right. I have also silenced all system sounds in Windows.
moondev 5y ago
go run github.com/patrickhener/goshs@latest
notRobot 5y ago
See also: darkttpd: When you need a web server in a hurry. https://github.com/emikulic/darkhttpd https://github.com/emikulic/darkhttpd
pkrumins 5y ago
Also `php -S` is very handy.
MisterTea 5y ago
Plan 9's rc-httpd is quite useful, supports cgi and serves many plan 9 web sites, many of which run werc http://werc.cat-v.org/ http://werc.cat-v.org/ It can also run on Unix via plan 9 port (p9p) or derivatives. https://github.com/9front/9front-test/blob/master/rc/bin/rc-httpd/rc-httpd https://github.com/9front/9front-test/blob/master/rc/bin/rc-...
zoomablemind 5y ago
Just an idea, along the lines of a single binary webserver: one may use Fossil SCM [1] to easily spawn a webserver ('fossil server', or even 'fossil ui'), no need for root (port 8080 by default). The pages could be served as part of a project (all version-controlled), or as documentation pages, or as wiki. Styling is somewhat limited, but could still be done creatively. Additionally, a static website or even a whole application (PHP or the likes) could be rolled out via /ext, the 'extension' path. [1]: https://www.fossil-scm.org https://www.fossil-scm.org
adamddev1 5y ago
Very cool. Was hoping to see Sean Connery in the README.

163 points by turrini 5y ago

> I didn't want to install and configure Apache or nGinx. In fact, I didn't want any configuration. Personally, in that case, I'd use: python3 -m http.server

rascul 5y ago
There are many similar options. I think that awhile ago there may have been a list of one liner web servers posted to HN. Either way, I've been using python's for years and it's just muscle memory now.
- em500 5y ago
  Big list of http static servers: https://gist.github.com/willurd/5720255 https://gist.github.com/willurd/5720255
nickjj 5y ago
That's my goto solution for a simple server if I'm testing something locally but it has issues dealing with concurrent requests in its simple form. For example I ran a simple hello world test service on Kubernetes once using Python's http.server. Just having 3 Kubernetes health checks happen on regular intervals would routinely cause the server to respond with errors. I think what ends up happening is if you have 2 requests coming in within a short enough period of time one of them will fail. You have to use a more complicated threaded http server if you want a zero dependency solution.
adamddev1 5y ago
`npm install -g live-server` Also works great (but a bit bulkier sure).

montroser 5y ago

Fantastic. For a more sinatra-inspired take, see also https://github.com/guigo2k/ganesh https://github.com/guigo2k/ganesh

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

vkazanov 5y ago

One those things that is s scarily beautiful

medv 5y ago

It is a socat server, not bash. Basically a bash script calling socat. Definitely not “pure”.

prussian 5y ago
Someone beat me to it. When I think of pure bash, I don't really think of invoking anything that isn't a builtin or a grammatical feature of bash. If socat is fair-play, almost anything you can spawn on a shell should count then. edit: on top of that, I already found a perl script utility in the repo: https://github.com/remileduc/sherver/blob/master/scripts/utils/mimetype https://github.com/remileduc/sherver/blob/master/scripts/uti...
- fragbait65 5y ago
  I think I'll just write something similar and wrap Apache with a shell scrip, claim that it's a web server written in bash, post it here and see what reaction I get, just for shits and giggles.
  - prussian 5y ago
    Here: https://github.com/remileduc/sherver/issues/1 https://github.com/remileduc/sherver/issues/1 that way you can have HTTP/1.1 support even with arbitrary output lengths. I was planning on sending this to the linked repo so the owner doesn't need to use HTTP/1.0. EDIT: changed link to the github issue I created with inlined utility.
- bluetomcat 5y ago
  Jokingly, "sudo service apache2 start" may also be considered pure Bash :-)
  - fragbait65 5y ago
    Exactly!
junon 5y ago

throwaway984393 5y ago

They reinvented CGI scripts but didn't actually implement CGI. Could have implicitly supported a lot of apps by default. There's some pretty decent CGI libraries for Bash, too. Personally I use busybox's httpd (which does support CGI) for a small portable web server.

laumars 5y ago

> I didn't want to install and configure Apache or nGinx. In fact, I didn't want any configuration. If you ignore all of the manual installation instructions and any dev time you took to create this, then sure. I’m not going to argue that the author should have used something else instead though. It’s a personal project used purely on an internet system of his house. For those kinds it projects “because I could” is as good a reason as any. I just think more authors should be honest and say “I just did it because it seemed fun at the time”

tjoff 5y ago
Manual instructions and dev time doesn't necessarily pollute the state of the machine though and are harder to replicate, which is how I would interpret it.
- laumars 5y ago
  Not having your application packaged up for quick removal strikes me as more polluting. And I don’t really see how an independent solution with almost no documentation and zero configuration management support (eg Ansible) is easier to replicate than a battle tested industry standard with widespread support. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against building things for fun. But the technical arguments made for why this is preferable over an established solution doesn’t stack up.
  - tjoff 5y ago
    I do. Just as I would use this (would look into it more first though), the netcat trick mentioned here or python3 -m http.server over ever considering installing Ansible and/or nginx/apache. Totally different use case though.
    - laumars 5y ago
      If I was rolling my own and concerned about polluting, I’d favour a language like Rust or Go because I then don’t need to install the Python runtime, have random undocumented dependencies for the bash etc. Or I’d use Docker. But as said before, there’s no wrong answer here since it’s just a hobby project running on a HTPC.

montroser 5y ago

For the occasional service where you are essentially just wrapping an existing binary, a bash server behind uwsgi can be totally sensible.

remote 5y ago

Kudos for scripting a great hack in BASH. Since the title reads "pure bash" however I was expecting to see an implementation using builtin bash features such as /dev/tcp. Have you considered solving this problem using BASH builtin support for TCP?

rascul 5y ago
I recall that bash can't create a server socket, because bash doesn't bind().

IceWreck 5y ago

If this is pure bash then so is ``` caddy file-server --browse --listen :80 ```

rascul 5y ago

This seems like an odd usage of cat and command substitution to me: HEAD_TEMPLATE=$(cat <<EOF <title>Sherver example</title> <meta name="description" content="Sherver example"> EOF ) https://github.com/remileduc/sherver/blob/master/scripts/index.sh#L21 https://github.com/remileduc/sherver/blob/master/scripts/ind...

junon 5y ago
It achieves multiline block text in bash, which is otherwise a PITA to reason about. It can keep certain scripts cleaner, especially since `cat` is often inlined, without process spawning.
- steerablesafe 5y ago
  > especially since `cat` is often inlined, without process spawning. That would be surprising. How would that work? `cat` is definitely not a bash built-in.
  - junon 5y ago
    Cat is not a specified built-in but many implementations do build it in to speed up scripts that use it quite heavily. Other examples include `which`, `time`, `echo`, etc. They're usually promoted to built-ins when it's clear that's the intended command to run, but there are still analogs on the PATH if need-be - I'm not sure exactly how bash would detect a non-standard executable there to know when it's unsafe to promote to a built-in, though. For example with echo: $ bash -c 'echo hi' hi $ strace bash -c 'echo hi' | grep 'exec' execve("/usr/bin/bash", ["bash", "-c", "echo hi"], 0x7fffe264aad0 /* 24 vars */) = 0 $ strace bash -c '$(which echo) hi' | grep 'exec' execve("/usr/bin/bash", ["bash", "-c", "$(which echo) hi"], 0x7fffe36c6cd0 /* 24 vars */) = 0 execve("/usr/bin/echo", ["/usr/bin/echo", "hi"], 0x7fffe2e16ff0 /* 25 vars */) = 0 In fact for me, `cat` always gets inlined, even if I call it with its full path or with `which cat`. There are cases where the built-in and the actual executable differ - the most prominent case being `time`. The built-in does not have the command line arguments to print out things like pre-empted scheduling (forced context swiches). $ time --help --help: command not found $ /usr/bin/time --help Usage: /usr/bin/time [-apvV] [-f format] [-o file] [--append] [--verbose] [--portability] [--format=format] [--output=file] [--version] [--quiet] [--help] command [arg...]

Brian_K_White 5y ago

Ah, no. Bold claim unrealized. Immediately I see many unnecessary forks and externals to do things that bash actually can do itself.

_wldu 5y ago

Here's my small webserver: #!/bin/bash while : ; do cat conference.txt | nc -l 80; done Here's the story behind it: https://www.go350.com/posts/finding-a-hacked-server/ https://www.go350.com/posts/finding-a-hacked-server/

Tepix 5y ago
I liked the story and the impromptu web server! Two comments: - using "ping -a" creates an audible ping so you can find the server if you're by yourself without having to look at the screen. - No need for cat: while :; do nc -l 80 < conference.txt; done
- vincnetas 5y ago
  TIL. thanx for -a.
- _wldu 5y ago
  Interesting. I don't hear anything when I use the -a flag.
  - thanatos519 5y ago
    Let's check with "reveal codes": $ ping -a 127.0.0.1 | less PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.029 ms^G 64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.023 ms^G Looks like you need a terminal that has a BEL sound.
  - vesinisa 5y ago
    It just echoes a Bell character to your terminal. Make sure your terminal emulator supports it, and is configured properly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_character https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_character
  - rzzzt 5y ago
    Windows Terminal shows a "visual bell" in the tab bar whenever BEL is emitted (even though I have it set to "audible" in advanced settings of the profile, hmm). Edit: Uhm, right. I have also silenced all system sounds in Windows.

moondev 5y ago

go run github.com/patrickhener/goshs@latest

notRobot 5y ago

See also: darkttpd: When you need a web server in a hurry. https://github.com/emikulic/darkhttpd https://github.com/emikulic/darkhttpd

pkrumins 5y ago

Also `php -S` is very handy.

MisterTea 5y ago

Plan 9's rc-httpd is quite useful, supports cgi and serves many plan 9 web sites, many of which run werc http://werc.cat-v.org/ http://werc.cat-v.org/ It can also run on Unix via plan 9 port (p9p) or derivatives. https://github.com/9front/9front-test/blob/master/rc/bin/rc-httpd/rc-httpd https://github.com/9front/9front-test/blob/master/rc/bin/rc-...

zoomablemind 5y ago

Just an idea, along the lines of a single binary webserver: one may use Fossil SCM [1] to easily spawn a webserver ('fossil server', or even 'fossil ui'), no need for root (port 8080 by default). The pages could be served as part of a project (all version-controlled), or as documentation pages, or as wiki. Styling is somewhat limited, but could still be done creatively. Additionally, a static website or even a whole application (PHP or the likes) could be rolled out via /ext, the 'extension' path. [1]: https://www.fossil-scm.org https://www.fossil-scm.org

adamddev1 5y ago

Very cool. Was hoping to see Sean Connery in the README.