[Dnsmasq-discuss] [suggestion] tiny embedded web server

Ed W lists at wildgooses.com
Tue Jun 28 12:38:45 BST 2011


On 25/05/2011 16:11, Ed W wrote:
> Now, the next question is perhaps, what is the lightest weight and most
> dependency free simply http server?  For example I have a server that I
> want to add to the ntp pool and one of their requests is that any http
> request to that IP is responded to with a redirect to the main
> http://pool.ntp.org website - trivial and desperately in need of a super
> lightweight server?
> 
> I can think of busybox's server. Probably there are some trivial perl
> scripts (but I would want to hear they weren't exploitable...).  Any
> other ideas for a trivial lightweight http server? Minimal logging, 301
> redirects and static file serving being the only requirements - non
> conforming to non mainstream http request headers completely acceptable...


Answering my own question. Although there are plenty of candidates, the
shortlist appears to draw from:

- Boa/thttpd - Both small, but unmaintained for a while?
- Monkeyd - very lightweight and pretty functional. Maintained. Appears
to be the modern ultra-micro webserver of choice?
- nginx - Who would have thought it was actually so small... 380KB for a
reasonably standard install, 260KB for a minimal build. Well maintained
with a development goal of being fast, secure and low memory

It obviously depends on how small your binary needs to be, but given
that I am very familiar with nginx it's small enough for my requirements.

Possibly worth adding as an FAQ item?

Ed W



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