Lighttpd Quickstart

Lighttpd is a tiny web server that's suitable to use on embedded systems and other setups where you want an extremely lightweight and speedy web server.

This will server as a short introduction to Lighttpd.

Installing lighttpd on Centos 8

We'll start by installing the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux community repository.

dnf install epel-release

And follow up with an installation of lighttpd.

dnf install lighttpd

Next, we'll enable and start the lighttpd daemon.

systemctl enable lighttpdsystemctl start lighttpd

Issue a curl to make sure the service is working correctly.

curl localhost

If you successfully pulled a webpage, congratulations - lighttpd is installed and working.

Now let's dig in the configuration file, open /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf with your favorite text editor and let's go over the config.

at the top you should see some default locations.

var.log_root    = "/var/log/lighttpd" # This is where logs will govar.server_root = "/var/www" # This is where we'll put our html filesvar.state_dir   = "/run/lighttpd" # this is where lighttpd will runvar.home_dir    = "/var/lib/lighttpd" # This is the home folder for lighttpdvar.conf_dir    = "/etc/lighttpd" # this is where we store configuration

Afterwards you'll see chroot config, we'll skip that. Next let's go over the basic configuration section.

###########################################################################  Basic Configuration## ---------------------##server.port = 80#### bind to a specific IP###server.bind = "localhost"#### Run as a different username/groupname.## This requires root permissions during startup. ##server.username  = "lighttpd"server.groupname = "lighttpd"#### Document root##server.document-root = server_root + "/lighttpd"#### store a pid file##server.pid-file = state_dir + "/lighttpd.pid"

Note the server port, the server bind, and the username and groupname.

Here is the logging section.

###########################################################################  Logging Options## ------------------#### all logging options can be overwritten per vhost.#### Path to the error log file##server.errorlog             = log_root + "/error.log"#### Access log config## include "conf.d/access_log.conf"#### The debug options are moved into their own file.## see conf.d/debug.conf for various options for request debugging.##include "conf.d/debug.conf"

So as you can see, since our log root is /var/log/lighttpd, errors will go to /var/log/lighttpd/error.log.

We'll skip most of the sections and go all the way down to SSL configuration.

###########################################################################  SSL Support## ------------- #### To enable SSL for the whole server you have to provide a valid## certificate and have to enable the SSL engine.::####   ssl.engine = "enable"##   ssl.pemfile = "/path/to/server.pem"####   $SERVER["socket"] == "10.0.0.1:443" {##     ssl.engine                  = "enable"##     ssl.pemfile                 = "/etc/ssl/private/www.example.com.pem"####     # Check your cipher list with: openssl ciphers -v '...'##     # (use single quotes as your shell won't like ! in double quotes)##     #ssl.cipher-list             = "PROFILE=SYSTEM"####     # (recommended to accept only TLSv1.2 and TLSv1.3)##     #ssl.openssl.ssl-conf-cmd = ("Protocol" => "-ALL, TLSv1.2, TLSv1.3")####     server.name                 = "www.example.com"####     server.document-root        = "/srv/www/vhosts/example.com/www/"##   }#### If you have a .crt and a .key file, specify both ssl.pemfile and ssl.privkey,## or cat them together into a single PEM file:## $ cat /etc/ssl/private/lighttpd.key /etc/ssl/certs/lighttpd.crt \##   > /etc/ssl/private/lighttpd.pem###ssl.pemfile = "/etc/ssl/private/lighttpd.pem"## or##ssl.privkey = "/etc/ssl/private/privkey.pem"#ssl.pemfile = "/etc/ssl/private/cert.pem"#### optionally pass the CA certificate here.#####ssl.ca-file = ""#### and the CRL revocation list here.#####ssl.ca-crl-file = ""#########################################################################

And below this section is the final one, where we include extra configuration files.

########################################################################### custom includes like vhosts.###include "conf.d/config.conf"#include "/etc/lighttpd/vhosts.d/*.conf"#########################################################################

Now that we took a look at the configuration, all we have to do is put some html files in the right location and test.

sudo echo '
Hello World!
/ > /var/www/lighttpd/index.html && chown lighttpd:lighttpd /var/www/lighttpd/index.htmlcurl localhost

You should now see the hello world message, success!