Kapisi/roles/WebServer

Having some information be publicly accessible is useful to the network -- it's how we can be available to new people. Because HTTPS is the protocol of choice today, the WebServer is our vector.

Etymology

The WebServer serves content on the Web -- its name is simple to match the function.

Relevant Files and Software

Configuration files live in /opt/openresty/nginx/, including ciphersuites, URI redirection, and pathing. It can be validated with the openresty -t command. Webserver isn't meant to hold files itself -- it generally proxies and SSL-terminates connections for other apps, using location-based hosting and fastcgi.

Of security note are the default.csp.conf and sec.conf files in the conf folder. These files include our security remediations, as we have been able to get them to work with our apps.

Please note: We offer a redirect on www.aninix.net and http://aninix.net:80/ only as a legacy convenience as browsers do not yet support 443 by default -- no data is transmitted on these. When the webhosting community acknowledges the death of the empty www. subdomain and the necessity of encryption, we will drop these. However, for usability, we include them for now.

Apps

We include files/apps here for apps that are too small to warrant their own project. These include things like:

• AniNIX/Scratch -- a scratchpad in cache
• AniNIX/BlackPage -- a blackout page for the monitor
• AniNIX/WhatIsMyIP -- an IP-returning service, reducing the load on upstream WhatIsMyIP

These apps must be short -- a hook is in place to ensure this.

Available Clients

Users should use Chrome where possible, though other standard browsers will work. AniNIX/Maat builds google-chrome as a package for ArchLinux.

Equivalents or Competition

Hosting services like GoDaddy and FreeHostia will provide hosting services for web pages. Content management can be done with systems like WordPress, but these solutions are wildly insecure, even if they can be convenient.