Documentation Source Text

    

The key observation here is that each incoming TCP/IP connection on 
port 80 launches a copy of /usr/bin/althttpd with some additional
arguments that amount to the configuration for the webserver.

Notice that althttpd is run as the superuser. This is not required, but if it
is done, then althttpd will move itself into a chroot jail at the root
of the web document hierarchy (/home/www in the example) and then drop
all superuser privileges prior to reading any content off of the wire.
The -user option tells althttpd to become user www-data after entering
the chroot jail.

The -root option tells althttpd where to find the document hierarchy.
In the case of sqlite.org, all content is served from /home/www.

If a prefix of a URI matches the name of an executable file then that
file is run as CGI.  For as-is content, the request URI must exactly
match the name of the file.

For content delivered as-is, the MIME-type is deduced from the filename
extension using a table that is compiled into althttpd.




























































Setup For HTTPS Using Stunnel4
------------------------------

Althttpd itself does not do any encryption.
To set up an encrypted website using althttpd, the recommended technique
is to use [stunnel4](https://www.stunnel.org/).

The "-port 8080" option is what tells althttpd to run in stand-alone
mode, listening on port 8080.

The author of althttpd has only ever used stand-alone mode for testing.
Since althttpd does not itself support TLS encryption, the
stunnel4 setup is preferred for production websites.

Security Features
-----------------

To defend against mischief, there are restrictions on names of files that
althttpd will serve.  Within the request URI, all characters other than
alphanumerics and ",-./:~" are converted into a single "_".  Furthermore,
if any path element of the request URI begins with "." or "-" then
althttpd always returns a 404 Not Found error.  Thus is it safe to put
auxiliary files (databases or other content used by CGI, for example)
in the document hierarchy as long as the filenames being with "." or "-".

An exception:  Though althttpd normally returns 404 Not Found for any
request with a path element beginning with ".", it does allow requests
where the URI begins with "/.well-known/".  This exception is necessary
to allow LetsEncrypt to validate ownership of the website.

Basic Authentication
--------------------

If a file named "-auth" appears anywhere within the content hierarchy,
then all sibling files and all files in lower-level directories require
[HTTP basic authentication](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_access_authentication),
as defined by the content of the "-auth" file.
The "-auth" file is plain text and line oriented.
Blank lines and lines that begin with "#" are ignored.
Other lines have meaning as follows:

  *  <b>http-redirect</b>

     The http-redirect line, if present, causes all HTTP requests to
     redirect into an HTTPS request.

  *  <b>https-only</b>

     The https-only line, if present, means that only HTTPS requests
     are allowed.  Any HTTP request results in a 404 Not Found error.
     The https-only line normally occurs after an http-redirect line.

  *  <b>realm</b> <i>NAME</i>

     A single line of this form establishes the "realm" for basic
     authentication.  Web browsers will normally display the realm name
     as a title on the dialog box that asks for username and password.

  *  <b>user</b> <i>NAME LOGIN:PASSWORD</i>

     There are multiple user lines, one for each valid user.  The
     LOGIN:PASSWORD argument defines the username and password that
     the user must type to gain access to the website.  The password
     is clear-text - HTTP Basic Authentication is not the most secure
     authentication mechanism.  Upon successful login, the NAME is
     stored in the REMOTE_USER environment variable so that it can be
     accessed by CGI scripts.  NAME and LOGIN are usually the same,
     but can be different.

  *  <b>anyone</b>

     If the "anyone" line is encountered, it means that any request is
     allowed through, even if there is not username and password provided.
     This line is useful in combination with "http-redirect" to cause
     all ordinary HTTP requests to redirect to HTTPS without requiring
     login credentials.

Basic Authentication Examples
-----------------------------

The <http://www.sqlite.org/> website contains a "-auth" file in the
toplevel directory as follows:

>
     http-redirect
     anyone

That -auth file causes all HTTP requests to be redirected to HTTPS, without
requiring any further login.  (Try it: visit http://sqlite.org/ and
verify that you are redirected to https://sqlite.org/.)

There is a "-auth" file at <https://fossil-scm.org/private/> that looks
like this:

>
     realm Access To All Fossil Repositories
     http-redirect
     user drh drh:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Except, of course, the password is not a row of "x" characters.  This
demonstrates the typical use for a -auth file.  Access is granted for
a single user to the content in the "private" subdirectory, provided that
the user enters with HTTPS instead of HTTP.  The "http-redirect" line
is strongly recommended for all basic authentication since the password
is contained within the request header and can be intercepted and
stolen by bad guys if the request is sent via HTTP.

Log File
--------

If the -logfile option is given on the althttpd command-line, then a single
line is appended to the named file for each HTTP request.
The log file is in the Comma-Separated Value or CSV format specified
by [RFC4180](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4180).
There is a comment in the source code that explains what each of the fields
in this output line mean.

The fact that the log file is CSV makes it easy to import into
SQLite for analysis, using a script like this:

>
    CREATE TABLE log(
      date TEXT,             /* Timestamp */
      ip TEXT,               /* Source IP address */
      url TEXT,              /* Request URI */
      ref TEXT,              /* Referer */
      code INT,              /* Result code.  ex: 200, 404 */
      nIn INT,               /* Bytes in request */
      nOut INT,              /* Bytes in reply */
      t1 INT, t2 INT,        /* Process time (user, system) milliseconds */
      t3 INT, t4 INT,        /* CGI script time (user, system) milliseconds */
      t5 INT,                /* Wall-clock time, milliseconds */
      nreq INT,              /* Sequence number of this request */
      agent TEXT,            /* User agent */
      user TEXT,             /* Remote user */
      n INT,                 /* Bytes of url that are in SCRIPT_NAME */
      lineno INT             /* Source code line that generated log entry */
    );
    .mode csv
    .import httplog.csv log
    

The filename on the -logfile option may contain time-based characters 
that are expanded by [strftime()](https://linux.die.net/man/3/strftime).
Thus, to cause a new logfile to be used for each day, you might use
something like:

>
     -logfile /var/logs/althttpd/httplog-%Y%m%d.csv