1# A simplistic and secure Gemini server 2 3**Vger** is a gemini server supporting chroot, virtualhosts, CGI, default language choice, redirections and MIME types detection. 4 5**Vger** design is relying on inetd and a daemon to take care of TLS. The idea is to delegate TLS and network to daemons which proved doing it correctly, so vger takes its request from stdin and output the result to stdout. 6 7The average setup should look like: 8 9``` 10 client 11 ↓ TCP request on port 1965 12 relayd or haproxy 13 or stunnel on inetd 14 ↓ TCP request to a port of choice on localhost 15 vger on inetd 16``` 17 18**Vger** is perfectly secure if run on **OpenBSD**, using `unveil()` the filesystem access is restricted to one directory (default to `/var/gemini/`) and with `pledge()` only systems calls related to reading files and reading input/output are allowed. More explanations about Vger security can be found [on this link](https://dataswamp.org/~solene/2021-01-14-vger-security.html). 19 20For all supported OS, it's possible to run **Vger** in a chroot and drop privileges to a dedicated user. 21 22 23# Install 24 25``` 26git clone https://tildegit.org/solene/vger.git 27cd vger 28./configure (only really useful for Linux) 29make 30doas make install 31``` 32 33On GNU/Linux, make sure you installed `libbsd`, it has been reported that using clang was required too. 34 35# Running tests 36 37**Vger** comes with a test suite you can use with `make test`. 38 39Some files under `/var/gemini/` are required to test the code path without a `-d` parameter. 40 41 42# Command line parameters 43 44**Vger** has a few parameters you can use in inetd configuration. 45 46- `-d PATH`: use `PATH` as the data directory to serve files from. Default is `/var/gemini` 47- `-l LANG`: change the language in the status return code. Default is no language specified. 48- `-v`: enable virtualhost support, the hostname in the query will be considered as a directory name. 49- `-u username`: enable chroot to the data directory and drop privileges to `username`. 50- `-m MIME` : use MIME as default instead of "application/octet-stream". 51- `-i` : Enable auto index if no "index.gmi" file is found in a directory. 52- `-c CGI_PATH` : files in CGI_PATH are executed and their output is returned to the client. 53 54 55# How to configure Vger using relayd and inetd 56 57Create directory `/var/gemini/` (I'd allow this to be configured later), files will be served from there. 58 59Create an user `gemini_user`. 60 61Add this line to inetd.conf: 62 63``` 64127.0.0.1:11965 stream tcp nowait gemini_user /usr/local/bin/vger vger 65``` 66 67Add this to relayd.conf 68``` 69log connection 70tcp protocol "gemini" { 71 tls keypair hostname.example 72} 73 74relay "gemini" { 75 listen on hostname.example port 1965 tls 76 protocol "gemini" 77 forward to 127.0.0.1 port 11965 78} 79``` 80 81Make sure certificates files match hostname: 82`/etc/ssl/private/hostname.example.key` and 83`/etc/ssl/hostname.example.crt`. 84 85On OpenBSD, enable inetd and relayd and start them: 86``` 87# rcctl enable relayd inetd 88# rcctl start relayd inetd 89``` 90 91Don't forget to open the TCP port 1965 in your firewall. 92 93Vger will serve files named `index.gmi` if no explicit filename is given. If this file doesn't exist and auto index is enabled, an index file with a link to every file in the directory will be served. 94