A Brief Introduction to thttpd

Client-Server Interfaces, Spring 2002

This page describes the thttpd web server you can use as part of the third project. Unless otherwise indicated, all files mentioned in this page can be found in

/export/home/class/cs-537/p3/thttpd-2.20c

This page will describe only enough to get you started with thttpd; see the man page thttpd.8 or the PostScript version thttpd.ps if you're interested in more information about thttpd.

You may run thttpd in any directory; the directory in which you run thttpd is known as the home directory. thttpd searches only the home directory for any files requested by clients.

thttpd accepts a number of options, but the three most important ones are -p, -D, and -c.

• The -D option prevents thttpd from running as a deamon. By default, thttpd forks a copy of itself and runs in background. From the command line, it looks as if thttpd is immediately exiting, which can be confusing until you realize what's going on. The -D option prevents the fork, making thttpd execute in foreground.

• The -p option sets the TCP port on which thttpd listens. The default is port 80, which is a well-known port. Unless you're running thttpd as root, it will fail if it tries to open port 80, and you'll have to specify some other port using -p.

• The -c option indicates the directory in which thttpd looks for cgi programs. The default is to not look for cgi programs; if you don't run thttpd with the -c option, it won't execute cgi programs.

  The -c option takes an argument specifying which files can be used as cgi programs. The argument uses shell-style meta-characters to specify files relative to the home directory. For example, -c '/*' indicates that files in the home directory are cgi programs, while -c '/cgi-bin/*' indicates that files in the sub-directory cgi-bin are cgi programs.

Any program you want to run as a cgi program must have other execute permissions set.

$ ls -l printenv
total 4
-r-x------   1 rclayton faculty       342 Feb 13  2000 printenv

$ chmod o+x printenv

$ ls -l printenv
total 4
-r-x-----x   1 rclayton faculty       342 Feb 13  2000 printenv

$

This page last modified on 9 April 2002.