go-httpd

A simple webserver in go based on ideas from OpenBSD httpd.

Features

• Simple configuration using JSON
  • See configfiles directory for example working configurations.
• Uses go's built-in net/http server
  • Supports HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2.0
  • Multiple servers can be configured with optional TLS.
  • Easy to use with acme-client, see configfiles/gohttpd.json example.
  • Automatic thread creation by go, each request is run in its own goroutine.
• Optional request logging
  • Uses CombinedLoggingHandler from github.com/gorilla/handlers
  • Uses gopkg.in/natefinch/lumberjack.v2 to write rotate reuqest log files when they reach a configured size.
  • File I/O for request logging is asynchronous using a go channel.
• Each HTTP server has a configured list of locations that are applied exactly in configured order for each request.
• Configurable response header values at server and server-location levels.
• Blocked locations and HTTP redirect locations.
• Static file and directory servers using standard go http.FileServer.
• Pre-compressed file serving using github.com/lpar/gzipped/v2
  • Supports brotli and gzip files based on Accept-Encoding request header
• Supports FastCGI with unix sockets using github.com/yookoala/gofast
• Drops privileges at startup and uses pledge(). Roughly the following happens at startup:
  1. go-httpd daemon is started as root
  2. Read configuration file and TLS certificates as root
  3. Create and bind server sockets (net.Listener) as root, allowing use of privileged ports 80 and 443.
  4. Call chroot to change root to /var/www or other configured directory
  5. Call setuid and setgid to change to unpriviged www user/group or other configured user/group
  6. Call pledge to limit system calls to stdio rpath wpath cpath inet unix.
  7. Create request logger if configured.
  8. Create request handlers and start the HTTP servers.
• A noop wrapper for pledge is provided so the app builds and runs on non-OpenBSD OS.

Usage on OpenBSD

• Install go if needed with pkg_add go
• Clone this git repo
• make - build go-httpd executable
• doas make install
  • Install executable to /usr/local/sbin/go-httpd
  • Install rc.d script to /etc/rc.d/gohttpd
• Copy example config file to /etc:
  • doas cp configfiles/gohttpd.json /etc
  • Modify /etc/gohttpd.json as needed
• Create directory for request logs if enabled
  • doas mkdir -p /var/www/gohttpd-logs
  • doas chown www:www /var/www/gohttpd-logs
• Enable and start daemon
  • doas rcctl enable gohttpd
  • doas rcctl start gohttpd

Command Line Arguments

• -h show usage and exit
• -f <config file path> override default config file path /etc/gohttpd.json
• -v enable verbose logging

Configuration File

• Example config files in configfiles directory
• Config file sections
  • dropPrivileges
    • May be omitted to disable dropping privileges
    • If chrootEnabled is true calls chroot at startup to change root directory to chrootDirectory
    • Calls setgid at startup with gid for groupName
    • Calls setuid at startup with uid for userName
  • requestLogger
    • May be omitted to disable request logging
    • If logToStdout is true, write request logs to stdout. Useful for debugging.
    • Else write request logs to requestLogFile (relative to chrootDirectory)
  • servers list of server configurations
    • serverID string server id used for logging only
    • networkAndListenAddressList list of addresses and ports to listen on.
    • timeouts read and write timeouts for server sockets
    • responseHeaders response header keys and values at server level.
    • locations list of location configurations. Applied in configured order when each request is processed.
      • locationID string location id used for logging only
      • httpPathPrefix url path prefix for matching location. If not specified defaults to "" which matches any URL.
      • responseHeaders response header keys and values at server-location level. Can be used to override server level responseHeaders.
      • Each location contains one of the following location types:
      • blockedLocation
        • Always return the specified responseStatus with no body
      • directoryLocation
        • Use go's http.FileServer to serve files in the specified directoryPath
        • directoryPath is relative to chrootDirectory
        • stripPrefix may be specified to strip url prefix elements before file serving
      • compressedDirectoryLocation
        • Use github.com/lpar/gzipped/v2 to serve pre-compressed static files ending in .gz or .br based on Accept-Encoding request header
        • Similar to gzip-static option in OpenBSD httpd
        • Configuration fields are the same as directoryLocation
      • fastCGILocation
        • Use github.com/yookoala/gofast to connect to a fastcgi application using a unix socket at network (unix or tcp) and address.
        • Optionally specify a connectionPool block containing a size and lifetimeMilliseconds. Defaults to no connection pool if not specified.
      • redirectLocation
        • Send a redirect response using the specified redirectURL and responseStatus
        • redirectURL may contain variables $HTTP_HOST and $REQUEST_PATH