gonzalo(8) FreeBSD System Manager's Manual gonzalo(8)
NAME
Gonzalo - Minimal Event-Driven HTTP/1.1 Server
SYNOPSIS
gonzalo -r <server-root> [-h <hostname> -i <interface> -p <port> -q <queue-size> -m <max-conns> -u <user> -g <group>]
DESCRIPTION
Gonzalo is a minimal, insecure, event-driven web server. Gonzalo serves
files for a single hostname. Gonzalo is Prospero's helper.
GONZALO SUPPORTS:
o IPv4 and IPv6 connections.
o HEAD and GET request methods.
o HTTP/1.1 persistent connections.
o A custom pipelining extension described in caliban.8
o Graceful stops.
GONZALO DOES NOT SUPPORT:
o Name-based virtual hosting.
o HTTP/2.
o TLS encrypted connections. Prospero(8) provides TLS.
o CGI. Gonzalo provides SCGI and WebSocket forwarding.
o Access authentication.
o Content negotiation beyond "If-Modified-Since", and "If-Unmodified-
Since".
o Transaction logging.
o Etags
o Directory listings.
o The ~user notation in URLS.
RATIONALE FOR DUAL SERVERS
To aid security, Gonzalo deliberately only services insecure requests for
static resources. There is no way that you can misconfigure Gonzalo to
service dynamic requests over insecure connections.
If you have static data that you do not want delivered insecurely, you
can give Gonzalo a different root directory from Prospero's root
directory and place only the insecure static resources in Gonzalo's root
directory. If you are paranoid, you can run Gonzalo on a different host.
If you do not want any resource delivered insecurely, you can only run
Prospero, or you can keep Gonzalo's root directory empty but for an index
page to redirect browsers to Prospero.
Secondary reasons for having two servers are that they make use of
hardware concurrency, and the performance loss associated with encrypted
connections only affects encrypted connections.
SYSTEM CONFIGURATION
By default, FreeBSD limits each process to a low number of maximum
simultaneously open descriptors. This places a limit on the number of
connections gonzalo may multiplex. Set these values at the command-line
with the "sysctl" utility, or enable them permanently by placing these
lines in /etc/sysctl.conf on the host machine. Your system will complain
about these values if it lacks resources.
kern.maxfiles=262144
kern.maxfilesperproc=131072
kern.kq_calloutmax=131072
To increase performance, gonzalo attempts to set the accf_http accept
filter on the listening socket. For this to succeed, you must load the
module before starting gonzalo.
kldload accf_http
To load the module automatically at system boot-up, add the following
line to /boot/loader.conf.
accf_http_load="YES"
CROSS-ORIGIN REQUESTS
Gonzalo rejects requests with "Host" header lines that do not specify the
host for which gonzalo is configured to serve content. This prevents
third parties from pointing their domains to your server.
Gonzalo rejects requests with "Referer" or "Origin" header lines that do
not match gonzalo's hostname unless the requested resources' filenames
end in .html, .tgz, .txz, or .gz. This prevents third party web pages
from linking to resources on your host except for web pages and archives.
CONTENT TYPES
Files served by gonzalo reside in the directory specified by the -r
option. Files must be owned by the user specified by the -u option or be
in the group specified by the -g option. Files must be readable by the
user or group. Note that gonzalo refuses to serve files owned by another
user and group even if the files are world-readable.
Only the following filename suffix mappings are recognized:
html text/html; charset=utf-8
css text/css,
js application/x-javascript
ttf font/opentype
otf font/opentype
appcache text/cache-manifest
txt text/plain; charset=utf-8
png image/png
jpg image/jpeg
gif image/gif
ico image/vnd.microsoft.icon
svg image/svg+xml
gz application/x-gzip
tgz application/x-compressed
zip application/zip
pdf application/pdf
mp3 audio/mpeg
To be able to restart on signals and bind to port 80, the gonzalo
executable is installed setuid root and executable by user and group.
For restarting to work, you need to manually chgrp(1) the executable into
the same group you specify with the -g option.
When waiting for a request, gonzalo drops connections after 10 seconds of
inactivity.
GONZALO CONFIGURATION
Gonzalo writes its pid into /var/run/gonzalo.pid if it can (ie., it is
started as root). You stop gonzalo with a SIGTERM and restart it with a
SIGHUP.
A rc.d script is installed in /usr/local/etc/rc.d/. Add the following
lines to /etc/rc.conf to start gonzalo on system boot. Replace the items
in brackets with values appropriate for your system. These are the
minimal set of options you should start with. The available options are
described in full at the end of this manual page.
gonzalo_enable="YES"
gonzalo_flags="-r <server-root> -u <user> -g <group>"
Start, stop, or restart gonzalo, or determine if it is running with the
following commands.
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/gonzalo start
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/gonzalo stop
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/gonzalo restart
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/gonzalo status
If you do not want gonzalo started on system start, set
gonzalo_enable="NO"
and use the following commands.
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/gonzalo forcestart
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/gonzalo forcestop
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/gonzalo forcerestart
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/gonzalo forcestatus
PERCENT ESCAPES
In the resource names of requests, gonzalo converts every sequence of
bytes consisting of a percent sign followed by two hexadecimal digits
into the byte specified by the hexadecimal value. Whitespace,
semicolons, and percent signs must all be percent-escaped to be
recognized in resource names.
COMPOUND REQUESTS WITH PIPELINED RESPONSES
Gonzalo recognizes compound requests as described the gonzalopipe.8
manual and delivers pipelined responses to those requests.
COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS
The following options are recognized.
-h The -h option sets the hostname for which gonzalo serves content. If
the option is not present on the command line, then the hostname is
taken from the system hostname. In requests, gonzalo recognizes this
hostname with or without the "www" subdomain. Do not include the
"www" subdomain in the hostname. In addition to the hostname,
gonzalo recognizes the IP addresses of listening interfaces.
If the system hostname cannot be determined, or the system hostname
is "localhost", then gonzalo uses the IPv4 loopback address as the
hostname: 127.0.0.1.
-r The -r option is mandatory and specifies the server root directory.
The root resource must be named "index.html". Requests for paths
that end in the directory separator are interpreted as requests for
"index.html" in the directories specified by those paths.
-m The -m option specifies the maximum number of simultaneous
connections that each gonzalo process services. If not set, gonzalo
maintains no more than 50000 simultaneous connections.
-p The -p option specifies the port to listen on. This defaults to 80.
-i The -i option limits gonzalo to accepting connections only from a
specified interface. Supply the IP address of the desired interface
as argument. By default, gonzalo accepts connections on all
interfaces capable of IPv4 or IPv6.
-q The -q option sets the number of incoming connections queued by the
operating system for the server. The queue defaults to 2048
connections. increasing this value may help the server cope with
high demand if the server is dropping connections.
-u
-g The -u and the -g options specify the user and group of gonzalo
server processes. If not specified, both values default to "nobody".
-x The -x option prevents gonzalo from becoming a daemon. Gonzalo runs
in the foreground of the terminal where it was started and is stopped
with signals (ie., Control-C). When the -x option is present,
gonzalo does not write its pid to /var/run/gonzalo.pid.
AUTHORS
James Bailie <jimmy@mammothcheese.ca>
http://www.mammothcheese.ca
March 9, 2017