gopherhole

README

gopherhole

A gopher server.

Usage

gopherhole -config "/path/to/config.json"

Configuration

The gopher server can be started with either a configuration file (located by the -configfile option below) or by setting various configuration flags.

If both are supplied, command line flags will override settings defined in the configuration file.

At the very least, you'll want to be sure the following configuration settings are set to the appropriate values for your system, as the default values will not be sufficient:

• "RootDirectory"/-root
• "Host"/-host

You should also set:

• "MaxConnections"/-maxconn
• "IdleTimeout"/-timeout

Command Line Flags

Flag	Type	Default	Description
help	Bool	false	Will print a list of all supported flags.
configfile	String	n/a	The path to the json configuration file.
root	String	n/a	The path to the root directory to serve files from.
host	String	n/a	The host name clients will use when making requests to this gopher hole.
port	Int	n/a	The port to listen on.
maxconn	Int	n/a	The maximum number of concurrent connections. 0 means no maximum.
mapfile	String	n/a	Files with this name will be served instead of the contents of the directory they reside in.
nologging	Bool	false	If true, logging output will be disabled.
logfile	String	n/a	Logs will be printed here instead of to STDOUT.
timeout	Int	n/a	After waiting this many secord for a query, connections will be closed. 0 means no timeout.

Configuration File

A configuration file must be in JSON, and may have any of the attributes listed above. Omitted attributes will use the default values.

{
	"RootDirectory": "/var/gopherhole",
	"Host": "joshcom.net",
	"Port": 70,
	"MaxConnections": 5,
        "MapFileName": "gophermap",
        "LogDisabled": false,
	"LogFile": "/var/logs/gopherhole.log",
	"IdleTimeout": 30,
        "DefaultMineType": "text/plain",
	"MimeTypeIgnoreList": ["application/", "text/html"]
}

Attribute	Default Value	Description
RootDirectory	"/var/gopherhole"	The root path of your gopherhole.
Host	"localhost"	The hostname to use when building a directory file list response. Clients will be instructed to make requests back to this domain, so you will want to change it from the default.
Port	70	The port to listen on, and to use when building a directory file list response.
MaxConnections	0	The maximum number of concurrent connections to allow. The default, 0, means no limit. It is recommended that you change this to a suitable non-zero value.
MapFileName	"gophermap"	The name of the file that, if present in a directory, will be served instead of a directory file list.
LogDisabled	false	If true, logging output will be supressed.
LogFile	n/a	If present, logs will be output to this file instead of STDOUT.
IdleTimeout	60	The number of seconds after which the connection will be closed if no query is made by the client. 0 means no timeout.
DefaultMimeType	"text/plain"	When a file's mimetype cannot be detected, it will be considered as this mime type.
MimeTypeIgnoreList	[]	An array of strings that represent mime types that should be ignored when building a directory list. Entries can include the full type and subgroup ("text/plain"), or the type without a subgroup to exclude all mime-types in the group ("text/", note the trailing slash is required).

Mime Types

The supported mime types will vary by system. The mime package is used to determine a file's mime type of its extension. Review the documentation here to see how mime types will be determined based on your OS.

Gopher Maps

If a gopher map (specified by the MapFileName setting, defaulting to gophermap) is present in a directory.

When you specify the path to a directory or resource, always use the full path in relation to the root of your gopherhole (not the root of your system). For example, if the gopherhole on your system is /var/gopherhole, and the file you want to access is at /var/gopherhole/phlog/myentry.txt, your gophermap should reference the file as /phlog/myentry.txt no matter where the gopherhole is located (be it /var/gopherhole/gophermap or /var/gopherohle/phlog/gophermap).

This file is lightly processed, so that any line not detected have a character will be presumed to be an inline-text line, and presented in the payload as such. Lines with a tab will be processed for completeness. The server will attempt to append the hostname and/or port, if those columns are missing.

In other words, a gophermap with the contents (where represents a tab character):

Welcome to my gopherhole!
0About this gopherhole<TAB>about.txt
1Phlog<TAB>phlog

...will be delivered (roughly) as:

iWelcome to my gopherhole!<TAB>(NOTHING)<TAB>nohost<TAB>0
0About this gopherhole<TAB>about.txt<TAB>yourhost.com<TAB>70
1Phlog<TAB>/phlog<TAB>yourhost.com<TAB>70

The takeaway being:

• You do not need to format your inline-text lines as inline-text entities. This will be done for you.
• Do not use the character on inline-text lines (unless you've opted to format it yourself), or the previous bullet will not apply.
• For local resources, feel free to omit the hostname and port tab columns. Be sure these lines have only a single tab, and that it is between the name and the path.