[hih-BAH-chee]

Japanese for "fire bowl", a hibachi is just that - a small (generally cast-iron) container made for holding fuel (usually charcoal). A grill that sits on top of the bowl is used to cook various foods. Hibachis come in square, oblong and round models. Because of their compact size, they're completely portable.

- epicurious.com food dictionary

Description

This is Hibachi. A simple, small, and secure web server with virtual host and Common Gateway Interface support. It is a limited implementation of RFC 2616 HTTP/1.1.

Hibachi supports dynamic web content through the use of RFC 3875 Common Gateway Interface 1.1 specification. Just about any scripting or programming language can be used, such as a POSIX shell, Perl, PHP, Python, and/or Ruby. Existing CGI scripts can be used with little or no modification. Hibachi executes all CGI scripts as though they were "nph" prefixed, which is to say that it is the script's responsibility to send the HTTP status line and necessary headers direct to the client.

Virtual host support is implemented as subdirectories of the Hibachi server root, where the directory name is the domain name publish in a URL. For example to setup a virtual host by name or IP for http://www.snert.com/, assuming the Hibachi server root is /var/hibachi/sites/, then:

/var/hibachi/sites/
	www.snert.com/
		index.html
		...
	www.snert.org -> www.snert.com
	www.snert.net -> www.snert.com
	192.0.2.9     -> www.snert.com

Hibachi is ideal for special floppy Linux or BSD distributions, which can be used for rescue, firewall, demo, or dedicated servers. Hibachi combined with a script interpreter, like PHP, could also be bundled with CDROMS that require a means of presenting dynamic web pages. Hibachi is currently used by Tick Cafe 3, an Internet Cafe time management system.

History

Hibachi 1.0 was a winning entry in the International Obfuscated C Code Contest 2004. It used a process forking model and worked only with Unix variants and the Cygwin environment for Windows.

Hibachi 2.0 switched to use threading and improved CGI/1.1 support. It ran on any Unix, Cygwin, or as a native Windows service. There was an experimental process fork version for Minix that was never released to the public.

Hibachi 3.0 uses a pre-spawned pool of server threads for increased performance, has a new option syntax similar to SnertSoft's other offerings, and supports IPv4 and IPv6. Like its predecessor it runs on Unix, Cygwin, or as a native Windows service.

Features

• Supports virtual hosts, with an optional default host.
• Supports .asis files and custom error documents (400, 404, 500, 501).
• Supports RFC 3875 Common Gateway Interface 1.1 scripts and programs.
• Supports multiple index.* file types, ie. index.html, index.cgi, index.php, index.pl, index.asis, ...
• Supports a subset of RFC 2616 HTTP/1.1 methods: GET, HEAD, and POST.
• Simple & straight forward configuration using command line options.
• Known to work with Chrome, Firefox, Lynx, Opera, and Internet Explorer web browsers.
• Uses POSIX or Windows threads.
• Tested on Cygwin, FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, and Windows.
• Can be run as a Unix daemon or Windows service.
• Is secure against relative path file snooping.
• Is secure against directory searches.
• And has a really cool animated logo too.

Option Syntax

hibachi [options]

Options can be expressed in four different ways. Boolean options are expressed as +option or -option to turn the option on or off respectively. Numeric, string, and list options are expressed as option=value to set the option or option+=value to append to a list. Note that the +option and -option syntax are equivalent to option=1 and option=0 respectively. String values containing white space must be quoted using single (') or double (") quotes. Option names are case insensitive.

Some options, like +help or -help, are treated as immediate actions or commands. Unknown options are ignored and not reported. The first command-line argument is that which does not adhere to the above option syntax. The special command-line argument -- can be used to explicitly signal an end to the list of options.

The default options, as shown below, can be altered by specifying them on the command-line or within an option file, which simply contains command-line options one or more per line and/or on multiple lines. Comments are allowed and are denoted by a line starting with a hash (#) character. If the file option is defined and not empty, then it is parsed first, followed by the command line options.

Option names that start with a leading underscore (_) are considered experimental and subject to change or be removed from future builds. They should not normally be used on production systems.

A default options file can be created using -help:

hibachi -help >/etc/hibachi.cf

or

hibachi help=./hibachi.cf

Option Summary

+daemon

Start as a background daemon or foreground application.

dns-max-timeout=45

Maximum timeout in seconds for a DNS query.

-dns-round-robin

Set true to query NS servers in round robin order. Set false to query all the NS servers in parallel.

file=/etc/hibachi/hibachi.cf

Read option file before command line options.

-help, +help, help=filepath

Write the option summary to standard output or a file and exit. The output is suitable for use as an option file. When the option is assigned a file path string, the output will be to saved the given file path, eg. help=C:/hibachi/hibachi.cf

-info, +info

Show version and build information.

interfaces="[::0]:8008; 0.0.0.0:8008"

A semi-colon separared list of interface host names or IP addresses on which to bind and listen for new connections. They can be IPv4 and/or IPv6.

mime-types=".htm, text/html"

mime-types+=".html, text/html"

mime-types+=".jpg, image/jpeg"

mime-types+=".jpeg, image/jpeg"

mime-types+=".gif, image/gif"

mime-types+=".png, image/png"

mime-types+=".txt, text/plain"

mime-types+=".css, text/css"

mime-types+=".js, text/javascript"

mime-types+=".zip, application/x-zip-compressed"

mime-types+=".rar, application/x-rar-compressed"

A semi-colon separated list of file-extension and mime-type pairs. Each file-extension and mime type pair is comma and/or space separated. Unknown extensions will default to application/octet-stream.

-quit, +quit

Quit an already running instance and exit.

-restart, +restart

Terminate an already running instance before starting.

-restart-if, +restart-if

Only restart when there is a currently running instance.

run-group=hibachi

Run as this Unix group.

-run-jailed

Run in a chroot jail; run-work-dir used as the new root directory.

run-pid-file=/var/run/hibachi.pid

The file path of where to save the process-id.

run-user=hibachi

Run as this Unix user.

run-work-dir=/var/tmp

The working directory of the process.

server-accept-timeout=10000

Time in milliseconds a server thread waits for a new connection, before possibly terminating excess threads.

server-max-threads=0

Maximum number of server threads possible to handle new requests. Specify zero to allow upto the system thread limit.

server-min-threads=10

Minimum number of server threads to keep alive to handle new requests.

server-new-threads=10

Number of new server threads to create when all the existing threads are in use.

server-read-timeout=30000

Time in milliseconds the server waits for some input from the client.

-service, +service

Remove or add Windows service.

-test-mode

Used for testing. Run the server in single thread mode and accept client connections sequentionally ie. no concurrency possible.

verbose=warn,info

Verbose logging to mail log. Specify one or more comma separated words: content, debug, dns, environment, info, mutex, protocol, socket, timers, trace, warn

-version, +version

Show version and copyright.

Installation

1. Download:

   hibachi Windows binary	md5sum	Change Log	License
   hibachi source	md5sum	Change Log	License
   LibSnert source	md5sum	Change Log	License

2. Depending on the OS platform:

   • Windows: Simply double-click on the installer to install the pre-built Windows native binaries and copy of this documentation.

   • Unix-like systems:

     tar -zxf hibachi-3.0.tar.gz
     tar -zxf libsnert-1.69.20.tar.gz
     cd com/snert/src/lib
     ./configure
     make build
     cd ../hibachi-3.0
     # Default install into /usr/local directories. See ./configure --help.
     ./configure --enable-root=/var/hibachi/sites
     make build
     sudo make install
     

Running (Unix)

To test and try out Hibachi:

cd hibachi-3.0
src/hibachi run-work-dir=.
lynx http://localhost:8008/

To stop the server:

src/hibachi -quit

To access this documentation and examples from the Internet, create symbolic links for the host name and/or IP pointing to the «localhost» directory. For example, replace the IP and host name addresses below with that of the machine running Hibachi:

ln -s localhost 192.0.2.1
ln -s localhost hibachi.snert.org

Hibachi can serve multiple web sites from the same machine simply by creating content directories with the same name as the URL domain names within the document root tree. Domain and/or IP aliases are simply symbolic links to content directories. Windows does not support symbolic links, so the domain or IP aliases can also be a simple text file containing the absolute path to another directory. There is never any need to restart Hibachi when web sites are published or aliases added. Assuming the server is running and that port 8008 is not blocked by any firewall, you should be able to access the server from the Internet using an IP or host name URL similar to:

http://192.0.2.1:8008/
http://hibachi.snert.org:8008/

Port 8008 (http-alt) was chosen as the default port for demonstration and testing purposes, since it is an alternative HTTP port that does not require special privileges and is rarely in use. Of course, Hibachi could be run as a standard web server on port 80, but this would require that it be installed by the system administrator. For example:

hibachi interfaces=0.0.0.0:80 run-user=www run-user=www
lynx http://localhost/

The user and group names specified above should be replaced by a suitable unprivileged user and group.

CGI Examples

The following tests and examples are available to demonstrate various aspects of the CGI support:

C

The first example is a simple dump of a GET request. The second one is a similar test using a POST request. The last test, while not impressive on its own, it is handy for a web client behind a NAT firewall wanting to discover its public IP address. These C based tests are the only ones that work without modification for the Windows native version of Hibachi.

• Dump GET Request
• Get IP address

POSIX Shell

These CGI scripts perform some basic tests on the handling of GET and POST requests, cookies, and the passing of environment variables to CGI scripts. These CGI scripts assume that /bin/sh is a POSIX compliant shell and the standard set of POSIX utilities are available. Should work for all Unix variants and Cygwin.

• Start POSIX Shell Test

Perl

This example queries the Yahoo web site for a stock quote to insert into a web page. This example requires a browser with JavaScript support and should work for all Unix variants and Cygwin, when Perl is installed.

• Start Perl Test

PHP

This PHP example generates a calendar complete with ISO 8601:2000 week numbers. The Windows native PHP 5 manual installation works very nicely now. The file:

test/php/php.ini.win.patch

shows the recommended Windows settings for PHP, assuming its installed in C:/php. Be sure to select the extensions you desire.

• ISO 8601:2000 calaendar using PHP.
• PHP configuration information.

Ruby

This example validates and/or generates Luhn check-digits. Should work for all Unix variants and Cygwin, when Ruby is installed.

• LUHN check digit validation & generation using Ruby.

Portability

		4.8+
		Linux 2.0+
		3.6+
		5.8+
		Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP Pro SP2 To build requires Cygwin, gcc, mingw.

License Agreement 1.7

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