[OT] minimalist web server

[Daniel Fetchinson]

Hi list,

This is waaaaay off topic but maybe somebody knowledgeable can help.

I'm looking for the most minimalist web server ever that does nothing
else than return a fixed static page for every request. Regardless of
what the request is, it just needs to be an HTTP request to port 80,
the web server should return always the same html document. What would
be the best choice for this? The goal is of course to minimize system
resources in terms of memory, cpu, etc, etc.

Cheers,
Daniel

 

[Paul Rubin]

I'm looking for the most minimalist web server ever that does nothing
else than return a fixed static page for every request. Regardless of
what the request is, it just needs to be an HTTP request to port 80,
the web server should return always the same html document. What would
be the best choice for this? The goal is of course to minimize system
resources in terms of memory, cpu, etc, etc.

If you're running linux, maybe you want tux.

publicfile isn't exactly what you describe, but its description might
be of some interest:

http://cr.yp.to/publicfile.html

 

[Daniel Fetchinson]

I'm looking for the most minimalist web server ever that does nothing

If you're running linux, maybe you want tux.

publicfile isn't exactly what you describe, but its description might
be of some interest:

http://cr.yp.to/publicfile.html

Thanks, tux looks good, the only problem is that one needs to
recompile the kernel which I really don't want to do (so yes, I'm on
linux). Publicfile seems to "know" already too much.

The reason I need this is that my current best strategy to avoid ads
in web pages is putting all ad server names into /etc/hosts and stick
my local ip number next to them (127.0.0.1) so every ad request goes
to my machine. I run apache which has an empty page for 404 errors so
I'll just see that blank page for every ad. Now I guess apache is a
pretty heavy weight guy so I'm looking for a lightweight alternative.
Lighttpd, nginx and company are all too complex and "know" too much. I
even considered just putting netcat into an infinite loop but I'm
afraid if there is a security hole in netcat I might be screwed.

Maybe now that I outlined a little more why I need this others can
come up with more suggestions.

 

[Daniel Fetchinson]

Maybe I found what I'm looking for: cheetah, a web server that is 600
lines of C code and that's it

http://freshmeat.net/projects/cheetahd/

 

[David Tweet]

Running this in Python should create a server running on localhost
port 80 that only serves blank pages:

import SimpleHTTPServer
import SocketServer

class MyHandler(SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler):
def do_GET(self):
print >> self.wfile, ""

server = SocketServer.TCPServer(("", 80), MyHandler)
server.serve_forever()

(also see http://effbot.org/librarybook/simplehttpserver.htm)

 

[Dave Benjamin]

The reason I need this is that my current best strategy to avoid ads
in web pages is putting all ad server names into /etc/hosts and stick
my local ip number next to them (127.0.0.1) so every ad request goes
to my machine. I run apache which has an empty page for 404 errors so
I'll just see that blank page for every ad. Now I guess apache is a
pretty heavy weight guy so I'm looking for a lightweight alternative.
Lighttpd, nginx and company are all too complex and "know" too much. I
even considered just putting netcat into an infinite loop but I'm
afraid if there is a security hole in netcat I might be screwed.

I don't know if this qualifies as "lightweight", but my current best
strategy is to block ads using a Squid proxy. My /etc/squid/squid.conf has:

acl ads dstdom_regex -i "/etc/squid/squid.adservers"
http_access deny ads
deny_info javascript:void(0) ads

/etc/squid/squid.adservers came from this site:
http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/

Ads completely disappear with no visible errors or unnecessary HTTP
requests. (Sorry, no Python needed for this one.)

Dave

 

[Mel]

Maybe I found what I'm looking for: cheetah, a web server that is 600
lines of C code and that's it

http://freshmeat.net/projects/cheetahd/

For the sake of on-topicness, there is this:



#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: ASCII -*-
'''$Id$
'''
from BaseHTTPServer import HTTPServer
from SimpleHTTPServer import SimpleRequestHandler

handler = HTTPServer (('', 8000), SimpleRequestHandler)
handler.handle_forever()



Mel.

 

[Paul Rubin]

from SimpleHTTPServer import SimpleRequestHandler

handler = HTTPServer (('', 8000), SimpleRequestHandler)

I think you mean SimpleHTTPRequestHandler. Note that actually reads
the url path and looks in the file system to get the file of that
name, which isn't what the OP wanted.

The OP might also try the junkbuster proxy (google for it) which I
think was renamed a while back.

 

[I V]

The reason I need this is that my current best strategy to avoid ads in
web pages is putting all ad server names into /etc/hosts and stick my
local ip number next to them (127.0.0.1) so every ad request goes to my
machine. I run apache which has an empty page for 404 errors so I'll

In this case, do you need a webserver at all? If your browser tries to
access a web server on 127.0.0.1 and there isn't one, won't the result,
in most cases, be more or less the same as if the server returned a 404?

 

[Michael Ströder]

I think you mean SimpleHTTPRequestHandler. Note that actually reads
the url path and looks in the file system to get the file of that
name, which isn't what the OP wanted.

But it's very easy to override the handler method and return the 404 for
each and every request.

Ciao, Michael.

 

[ghirai]

Running this will start a server on port 80 which will serve files in
the current folder:

import SimpleHTTPServer
import SocketServer
SocketServer.TCPServer(("",80),SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler).serve_forever()


Regards,
Ghirai.

 

[Daniel Fetchinson]

The reason I need this is that my current best strategy to avoid ads in

In this case, do you need a webserver at all? If your browser tries to
access a web server on 127.0.0.1 and there isn't one, won't the result,
in most cases, be more or less the same as if the server returned a 404?

Not quite, because if the browser doesn't get a response from the
server it will keep trying for a while and will only give up after
that. And then will display a "server not found, blablablabla" message
depending on the browser, which will appear in place of every ad.
That's ugly and it's better to have an empty page.

Concerning the python solutions posted by several guys, they are too
heavyweight compared to a ~ 1-3 hundred lines of C code that one can
obtain from cheetah's source code.

 

[MonkeeSage]

Not quite, because if the browser doesn't get a response from the
server it will keep trying for a while and will only give up after
that. And then will display a "server not found, blablablabla" message
depending on the browser, which will appear in place of every ad.
That's ugly and it's better to have an empty page.

Concerning the python solutions posted by several guys, they are too
heavyweight compared to a ~ 1-3 hundred lines of C code that one can
obtain from cheetah's source code.

Then use those lines of source, heh. No need to try to force python to
fit every problem. If you have a solution that works better in some
other language, then use it; we won't be angry.

Regards,
Jordan