Re: [dev] A simpler static file server than quark

From: Richard Ulmer <maillists.rulmer_AT_mailbox.org>
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2020 08:59:55 +0100

Hi Hiltjo,

Hiltjo Posthuma <hiltjo_AT_codemadness.org> wrote:
> > I have used quark for this, but found it annoying, that I have to
> > provide a host and port and run it as root (the noroot patch doesn't
> > always work either, because the use of fork(2) is restricted). It seems
> > like others have similar complaints about quark [2].
>
> You can simply build a version of quark with chroot(2) and privdrop commented
> out.
> fork(2) is not restricted, but chroot(2) and setgid(2) is.

This is exactly what the noroot patch does: Removing chroot(2),
setgid(2), setuid(2) and setgroups(2). I didn't make up the behaviour I
described. I'm unable to reproduce the error right now, but it occurs
occasionally on an Ubuntu system I use. I think the exact error is
"fork: Resource temporarily unavailable". Maybe the problem could be
resolved using ulimit, but I haven't tried that yet.

> It's not much lines of code by itself, but it is not minimalist I think.
>
> [...]
>
> For port < 1024 you'd still need root or namespace priviledges usually.
>
> quark supports GET and HEAD requests and supports common byte-ranges too.

I'm getting the feeling that I offended you. This was not my intention.
I don't want to discredit quark; it has use cases, which cannot be
satisfied by the tool I presented. statico is better suited for some
use cases that I frequently encounter, but that doesn't mean it's a
replacement for quark.

Best regards,
Richard Ulmer
Received on Sun Jan 26 2020 - 08:59:55 CET