App-Phoebe
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cpan App::Phoebe
The Perl files are stored in F</home/phoebe/perl5>.
=head1 QUICKSTART
Start Phoebe.
phoebe
When you run it for the first time, Phoebe is going to prompt you for a hostname
and create certificates for you. If in doubt, answer C<localhost>. The
certificate and a private key are stored in the F<cert.pem> and F<key.pem>
files, using elliptic curves, valid for five years, without password protection.
Do you want to create them right now?
The certificate uses eliptic curves and is valid for five years.
If so, please provide your hostname (e.g. localhost).
If not, just press Enter.
localhost
openssl req -new -x509 -newkey ec -subj "/CN=localhost" -pkeyopt ec_paramgen_curve:prime256v1 -days 1825 -nodes -out cert.pem -keyout key.pem
Generating an EC private key
writing new private key to 'key.pem'
-----
If it aborts, see the L</Troubleshooting> section below. If it runs, open a
second terminal and test it:
gemini gemini://localhost/
You should see a Gemini page starting with the following:
20 text/gemini; charset=UTF-8
Welcome to Phoebe!
Success!! ð ðð
Let's create a new page using the Titan protocol, from the command line:
echo "Welcome to the wiki!" > test.txt
echo "Please be kind." >> test.txt
titan --url=titan://localhost/raw/Welcome --token=hello test.txt
You should get a nice redirect message.
30 gemini://localhost:1965/page/Welcome
You can check the page:
gemini gemini://localhost:1965/page/Welcome
You should get back a page that starts as follows:
20 text/gemini; charset=UTF-8
Welcome to the wiki!
Please be kind.
Yay! ðð ðð
If you have a bunch of Gemtext files in a directory, you can upload them all in
one go:
titan --url=titan://localhost/ --token=hello *.gmi
=head1 CERTIFICATES
If you want to generate your own certificates, here's how you would generate a
certificate for two domains (you can add as many as you need), and a common name
of "Phoebe" (use whatever you want).
openssl req -new -x509 -newkey ec \
-pkeyopt ec_paramgen_curve:prime256v1 \
-subj "/CN=Phoebe" \
-addext "subjectAltName=DNS:localhost,DNS:phoebe.local" \
-days 1825 -nodes -out cert.pem -keyout key.pem
=head1 IMAGE UPLOADS
OK, how do image uploads work? First, we need to specify which MIME types Phoebe
accepts. The files are going to be served back with that MIME type, so even if
somebody uploads an executable and claim it's an image, other people's clients
will treat it as an image instead of executing it (one hopes!) â so let's start
with a list of common MIME types.
=over
=item * C<image/jpeg> is for photos (usually with the C<jpg> extension)
=item * C<image/png> is for graphics (usually with the C<png> extension)
=item * C<audio/mpeg> is for sound (usually with the C<mp3> extension)
=back
Let's continue using the setup we used for the L</QUICKSTART> section. Restart
the server and allow photos:
phoebe --wiki_mime_type=image/jpeg
Upload the image using the C<titan> script:
titan --url=titan://localhost:1965/jupiter.jpg \
--token=hello Pictures/Planets/Juno.jpg
You should get back a redirect to the uploaded image:
30 gemini://localhost:1965/file/jupiter.jpg
How did the C<titan> script know the MIME-type to use for the upload? If you
don't specify a MIME-type using C<--mime>, the C<file> utility is called to
guess the MIME type of the file.
Test it:
file --mime-type --brief Pictures/Planets/Juno.jpg
The result is the MIME-type we enabled for our wiki:
image/jpeg
Here's what happens when you're trying to upload an unsupported MIME-type:
titan --url=titan://localhost:1965/earth.png \
--token=hello Pictures/Planets/Earth.png
What you get back explains the problem:
59 This wiki does not allow image/png
In order to allow such graphics as well, you need to restart Phoebe:
phoebe --wiki_mime_type=image/jpeg --wiki_mime_type=image/png
Except that in my case, the image is too big:
59 This wiki does not allow more than 100000 bytes per page
I could scale it down before I upload the image, using C<convert> (which is part
of ImageMagick):
convert -scale 20% Pictures/Planets/Earth.png earth-small.png
Try again:
titan --url=titan://localhost:1965/earth.png \
--token=hello earth-small.png
Alternatively, you can increase the size limit using the
C<--wiki_page_size_limit> option, but you need to restart Phoebe:
phoebe --wiki_page_size_limit=10000000 \
--wiki_mime_type=image/jpeg --wiki_mime_type=image/png
Now you can upload about 10MBâ¦
=head1 USING SYSTEMD
Systemd is going to handle daemonisation for us. There's more documentation
available online.
L<https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.service.html>.
Basically, this is the template for our service, assuming that you created a
separate user for Phoebe:
[Unit]
Description=Phoebe
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=/home/phoebe
ExecStart=/home/phoebe/phoebe
Restart=always
User=phoebe
Group=phoebe
MemoryMax=100M
MemoryHigh=90M
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Save this as F<phoebe.service>, and then link it:
sudo ln -s /home/phoebe/phoebe.service /etc/systemd/system/
Reload systemd:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
Start Phoebe:
sudo systemctl start phoebe
Check the log output:
sudo journalctl --unit phoebe
=head1 Troubleshooting
ð¥ Unknown command phoebe ð¥ If you installed Phoebe using cpan or cpanm and you
still get this error, then something about your Perl installation isn't working.
Phoebe probably got installed in some directory, you just need to make sure it's
in your PATH. If you use zsh and Perlbrew, for example, you need to add the
following line to your F<~/.zshenv> file:
source ${HOME}/perl5/perlbrew/etc/bashrc
ð¥ B<1408A0C1:SSL routines:ssl3_get_client_hello:no shared cipher> ð¥ If you
created a new certificate and key using elliptic curves using an older OpenSSL,
you might run into this. Try to create a RSA key instead. It is larger, but at
least it'll work.
openssl req -new -x509 -newkey rsa \
-days 1825 -nodes -out cert.pem -keyout key.pem
=head1 FILES
Your home directory should now also contain a wiki directory called F<wiki>,
your wiki directory. In it, you'll find a few more files:
F<page> is the directory with all the page files in it; each file has the C<gmi>
extension and should be written in Gemtext format
F<index> is a file containing all the files in your F<page> directory for quick
access; if you create new files in the F<page> directory, you should delete the
F<index> file â it will get regenerated when needed; the format is one page name
(without the C<.gmi> extension) per line, with lines separated from each other
by a single C<\n>
F<keep> is the directory with all the old revisions of pages in it â if you've
only made one change, then it won't exist; if you don't care about the older
revisions, you can delete them; assuming you have a page called C<Welcome> and
edit it once, you have the current revision as F<page/Welcome.gmi>, and the old
revision in F<keep/Welcome/1.gmi> (the page name turns into a subdirectory and
each revision gets an apropriate number)
F<file> is the directory with all the uploaded files in it â if you haven't
uploaded any files, then it won't exist; you must explicitly allow MIME types
for upload using the C<--wiki_mime_type> option (see I<Options> below)
F<meta> is the directory with all the meta data for uploaded files in it â there
should be a file here for every file in the F<file> directory; if you create new
files in the F<file> directory, you should create a matching file here; if you
have a file F<file/alex.jpg> you want to create a file F<meta/alex.jpg>
containing the line C<content-type: image/jpeg>
F<changes.log> is a file listing all the pages made to the wiki; if you make
changes to the files in the F<page> or F<file> directory, they aren't going to
be listed in this file and thus people will be confused by the changes you made
â your call (but in all fairness, if you're collaborating with others you
probably shouldn't do this); the format is one change per line, with lines
separated from each other by a single C<\n>, and each line consisting of time
stamp, pagename or filename, revision number if a page or 0 if a file, and the
numeric code of the user making the edit (see L</Privacy> below), all separated
from each other with a C<\x1f>
F<config> probably doesn't exist, yet; it is an optional file containing Perl
code where you can add new features and change how Phoebe works (see
L</Configuration> below)
F<conf.d> probably doesn't exist, either; it is an optional directory containing
even more Perl files where you can add new features and change how Phoebe works
(see L</Configuration> below); the idea is that people can share stand-alone
configurations that you can copy into this directory without having to edit your
own F<config> file.
=head1 OPTIONS
=over
=item * C<--wiki_token> is for the token that users editing pages have to
provide; the default is "hello"; you can use this option multiple times
and give different users different passwords, if you want
=item * C<--wiki_page> is an extra page to show in the main menu; you can use
this option multiple times; this is ideal for general items like I<About>
or I<Contact>
=item * C<--wiki_main_page> is the page containing your header for the main
page; that's were you would put your ASCII art header, your welcome
message, and so on, see L</Main Page and Title> below
=item * C<--wiki_mime_type> is a MIME type to allow for uploads; text/plain is
always allowed and doesn't need to be listed; you can also just list the
type without a subtype, eg. C<image> will allow all sorts of images (make
sure random people can't use your server to exchange images â set a
password using C<--wiki_token>)
=item * C<--wiki_page_size_limit> is the number of bytes to allow for uploads,
both for pages and for files; the default is 10000 (10kB)
=item * C<--host> is the hostname to serve; the default is C<localhost> â you
probably want to pick the name of your machine, if it is reachable from
the Internet; if you use it multiple times, each host gets its own wiki
space (see C<--wiki_space> below)
=item * C<--port> is the port to use; the default is 1965; if you use it
multiple times on the same host, they all share the same wiki space
=item * C<--wiki_dir> is the wiki data directory to use; the default is either
the value of the C<PHOEBE_DATA_DIR> environment variable, or the "./wiki"
subdirectory
=item * C<--wiki_space> adds an extra space that acts as its own wiki; a
subdirectory with the same name gets created in your wiki data directory
and thus you shouldn't name spaces like any of the files and directories
already there (see L</FILES>); not that settings such as
C<--wiki_page> and C<--wiki_main_page> apply to all spaces, but the page
content will be different for every wiki space
=item * C<--cert_file> is the certificate PEM file to use; the default is
F<cert.pem>
=item * C<--key_file> is the private key PEM file to use; the default is
F<key.pem>
=item * C<--no_cert> indicates that the server should not be using TLS; use this
if you have a reverse proxy handling requests (so that front end and back
end don't need to use TLS to communicate with each other)
=item * C<--log_level> is the log level to use (C<fatal>, C<error>, C<warn>,
C<info>, C<debug>); the default is C<warn>
=item * C<--log_file> is the log file to use; the default is undefined, which
means that STDERR is used
=back
When looking at the command line, Phoebe accumulates hostnames (C<--host>)and
ports (C<--port>) until both a certificate (C<--cert_file>) and a private key
(C<--key_file>) have been provided, or you have indicated that no TLS is
required (C<--no_cert>), at which point the process starts again.
Here is an example that is problematic:
phoebe --host transjovian.org \
--port 1965 --port 443 --cert_file cert.pem --key_file key.pem
This serves the host on both ports, using the same certificate. This is probably
not what you want if your certificates are signed by Let's Encrypt or some other
service that make you renew the certificate every now and then. This breaks the
TOFU model as Gemini clients will warn users everytime the certificate has
changed, asking them to confirm the change. This is very annoying. Most likely
you want different certificates!
Something like the following probably better suited. The web certificate and web
private key is what you get from Let's Encrypt (and if you do, restart Phoebe),
and the regular certificate and key file is what you generated yourself for
Gemini. Just make sure you replace those before they expire!
phoebe --host transjovian.org \
--port 1965 --cert_file cert.pem --key_file key.pem \
--port 443 --cert_file web_cert.pem --key_file web_key.pem
=head2 UPLOADS
If you allow uploads of binary files, these are stored separately from the
regular pages; the wiki doesn't keep old revisions of files around. If somebody
overwrites a file, the old revision is gone.
You definitely don't want random people uploading all sorts of images, videos
and binaries to your server. Make sure you set up those L<tokens|/Security>
using C<--wiki_token>!
=head1 NOTES
=head2 Security
The server uses "access tokens" to check whether people are allowed to edit
files. You could also call them "passwords", if you want. They aren't associated
with a username. You set them using the C<--wiki_token> option. By default, the
only password is "hello". That's why the Titan command above contained
"token=hello". ð
If you're going to check up on your wiki often (daily!), you could just tell
people about the token on a page of your wiki. Spammers would at least have to
read the instructions and in my experience the hardly ever do.
You could also create a separate password for every contributor and when they
leave the project, you just remove the token from the options and restart
Phoebe. They will no longer be able to edit the site.
=head2 Privacy
The server only actively logs changes to pages. It calculates a "code" for every
contribution: it is a four digit octal code. The idea is that you could colour
every digit using one of the eight standard terminal colours and thus get little
four-coloured flags.
This allows you to make a pretty good guess about edits made by the same person,
without telling you their IP numbers.
The code is computed as follows: the IP numbers is turned into a 32bit number
using a hash function, converted to octal, and the first four digits are the
code. Thus all possible IP numbers are mapped into 8â´=4096 codes.
If you increase the log level, the server will produce more output, including
information about the connections happening, like C<2020/06/29-15:35:59 CONNECT
SSL Peer: "[::1]:52730" Local: "[::1]:1965"> and the like (in this case C<::1>
is my local address so that isn't too useful but it could also be your visitor's
IP numbers, in which case you will need to tell them about it using in order to
comply with the
L<GDPR|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation>.
=head1 EXAMPLE
Here's an example for how to start Phoebe. It listens on C<localhost> port 1965,
adds the "Welcome" and the "About" page to the main menu, and allows editing
using one of two tokens.
phoebe \
--wiki_token=Elrond \
--wiki_token=Thranduil \
--wiki_page=Welcome \
--wiki_page=About
Here's what my F<phoebe.service> file actually looks like:
[Unit]
Description=Phoebe
After=network.target
( run in 1.345 second using v1.01-cache-2.11-cpan-b16cb0d3907 )