darkhttpd-rs

Rust port of darkhttpd, a simple and fast web server for static content.

Like the original, darkhttpd-rs constrains itself to a single source file and minimal dependencies. Porting was done incrementally, by replacing individual C functions, until the entire program was translated.

darkhttpd-rs is experimental. You probably want to use darkhttpd instead.

Changes from darkhttpd

• sendfile support required.
• FreeBSD acceptfilter support (--accf) removed.
• Only tested on Linux.

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.
• 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().
• ISC license.

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

Install the Rust toolchain.

Build ./target/release/darkhttpd-rs with cargo:

cargo build --release

How to run

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

darkhttpd-rs /var/www/htdocs

Serve ~/public_html on port 8081:

darkhttpd-rs ~/public_html --port 8081

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

darkhttpd-rs ~/public_html --addr 192.168.0.1

Serve at most 4 simultaneous connections:

darkhttpd-rs ~/public_html --maxconn 4

Log accesses to a file:

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

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

darkhttpd-rs /var/www/htdocs --chroot

Use default.htm instead of index.html:

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

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

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

Drop privileges:

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

Run in the background and create a pidfile:

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

Web forward (301) requests for some hosts:

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

Command line options can be combined:

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

To see a full list of command line options, run darkhttpd-rs without any arguments:

darkhttpd-rs