trusted-cgi

README

Trusted-CGI

Lightweight self-hosted lambda/applications/cgi/serverless-functions engine.

Why?

Because I want to write small handlers that will be 99% of time just do nothing. I am already paying for the cheapest Digital Ocean (thanks guys for your existence) and do not want to pay additionally to Lambda providers like Google/Amazon/Azure.

I also tried self hosted solutions based on k3s but it too heavy for 1GB server (yep, it is, don't believe in marketing).

So, 'cause I am a Developer I decided to make my own wheels ;-)

Idea behind

Idea came from past: CGI. In a beginning of Internet, people have being making a simple scripts that receives incoming bytes over STDIN (standard input) and writes to STDOUT (standard output). The application server (aka CGI server), accepts clients, invokes scripts and redirects socket input/output to the script. There are a lot of details here but this is brief explanation.

After more than 20 years the world spin around and arrived to the beginning: serverless functions/lambda and so on. It is almost CGI, except scripts became a docker containers, and we need much more servers to do the same things as before.

So let's cut the corners a bit: we have a trusted developer (our self, company workers - means it's not arbitrary clients), so we don't need a heavy restriction for the application, so let's throw away docker and another heavy staff.

Add some piece of security: inbound IP, inbound origins, tokens....

Add monitoring of hits and history details....

Add neat Web UI file browsing with edit functions...

Add playground where you can test your scripts....

Add nice logo, license everything under MIT and you will get Trusted-CGI.

Installation

Play locally

Just download and run trusted-cgi --dev

Direct to server (recommended)

Recommended: ubuntu LTS x64 server

1. Add bintray key sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 379CE192D401AB61
2. Download from releases page, or (better) use bintray repo
3. apt update - update repos (optional since 18.04 and you used bintray repo)
4. apt install trusted-cgi or for minimal apt install --no-install-recommends trusted-cgi

For Ubuntu (should be for all LTS)

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 379CE192D401AB61
echo "deb https://dl.bintray.com/reddec/debian all main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/trusted-cgi.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install trusted-cgi

Configuration files will be placed under /etc/trusted-cgi, functions files under /var/trusted-cgi, systemd service will be launched as trusted-cgi and all new services will be run under trusted-cgi system user.

Docker

Notice: due to docker nature it is impossible to make restrictions by IP.

• Pull image: docker pull reddec/trusted-cgi
• Run for test docker run --rm -p 3434:3434 reddec/trusted-cgi

There are several exposed parameters (see Dockerfile), however, data stored in /data and initial admin password is admin (change it!).

The docker image contains pre-installed python3 (+requests), node js (+axios) and php to let experiment with default functions.

Actions

If function contains Makefile and installed make, it is possible to invoke targets over UI/API (called Actions). Useful for installing dependencies or building.

URL

Each function contains at least one URL: <base URL>/a/<UID> and any number of unique aliases/links <base URL>/l/<LINK NAME>.

Links are useful to make a public links and dynamically migrate between real implementations (functions). For ex: you made a GitHub hook processor in Python language, than changed your mind and switched to PHP function. Instead of updating link in GitHub repo (that could be a hassle if you spread it everywhere) you can change just a link.

Important! Security settings and restrictions will be used from new functions.

Templates

Embedded

Python 3

Host requirements:

• make
• python3
• python3-venv

Node

Host requirements:

• make
• node
• npm

PHP

Host requirements:

• php

Nim lang

Host requirements:

• make
• nim
• nimble

Development

Embedding UI

make clean
make embed_ui
`

## TODO

* Upload/download tarball
* CLI control