Intro

I wanted to try blogging again. So I checked for software I could use. I absolutely hate Wordpress and Co because it’s simply to much stuff for just posting a random article or two. While searching for a simple blogging software I looked at one of my favorite blogs namely fefes blog. He is using a ~~non disclosed~~ C program to format his Blog and then publishes it with his own brand of web server. EDIT: Source Code for fefes blog can be found here.

In my search for a simple blog software I found Jekyll. I liked it because it generates static files which can be hosted by about anything and is highly customizable without messing around with this dreadful php stuff.

So all I needed now was a web server. I didn’t want apache because apache is bloated. I tried configuring nginx and broke it twice I think. After contemplating just hacking my own in GO I looked again to fefe and found that while his blog software is not published his web servers are. He has written two different web servers gatling and fnord. While the latter is no longer developed further the former is. So I decided on gatling.

Everything further presumes you have the normal building tools installed.

Installing gatling proved more difficult then I envisioned. Yes one can run make && make install but somehow just running it naively produces error messages. Well thank god I sometimes listen when everything screams RTFM at me. So… RTFM? let’s have a look if there is a readme file:

[root@localhost gatling-0.13]# ll README*
-rw-r--r--. 1 1000 users  265  7. Okt 2003  README
-rw-r--r--. 1 1000 users  899  8. Apr 2008  README.antidos
-rw-r--r--. 1 1000 users  581 10. Okt 2003  README.bindbench
-rw-r--r--. 1 1000 users  699  2. Jun 2009  README.cgi
-rw-r--r--. 1 1000 users  406  9. Okt 2003  README.forkbench
-rw-r--r--. 1 1000 users 2773  2. Jun 2009  README.ftp
-rw-r--r--. 1 1000 users  605 31. Okt 2005  README.htaccess
-rw-r--r--. 1 1000 users 1007  2. Jun 2009  README.http
-rw-r--r--. 1 1000 users 2308  2. Jun 2009  README.httpbench
-rw-r--r--. 1 1000 users 1243 23. Okt 2003  README.manymapbench
-rw-r--r--. 1 1000 users 1152 11. Nov 2003  README.mmapbench
-rw-r--r--. 1 1000 users 1470 14. Jan 2004  README.performance
-rw-r--r--. 1 1000 users 1176  9. Jan 2010  README.php
-rw-r--r--. 1 1000 users  949 19. Aug 2011  README.polarssl
-rw-r--r--. 1 1000 users 2226  7. Jan 2004  README.prefetch
-rw-r--r--. 1 1000 users 1315  9. Jan 2010  README.proxy
-rw-r--r--. 1 1000 users  912 17. Mai 2005  README.redirect
-rw-r--r--. 1 1000 users 1724 23. Mär 2010  README.tls

Well then… README tells me I need libowfat. Let’s install that first:

Going to fefe’s libowfat page tells me I also should use diet libc…

diet libc

Get it from here either using cvs or download the tar ball.
After extracting it cd to the directory and make. Many Many lines of gcc output later it’s finished. The README tells me I need to run install bin-x86_64/diet /usr/local/bin to use it. make install yields some errors which I ignore. Maybe everything works allright.
That was all that was necessary to install diet libc.

libowfat

Get it from here again either using cvs or download the tar ball.
Here a simple make && make install does the trick.

gatling

Finally I can install gatling

[root@localhost gatling-0.13]# make
[...]
ssl.c:9:25: schwerwiegender Fehler: openssl/ssl.h: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
 #include <openssl/ssl.h>
                         ^
Kompilierung beendet.
make: *** [ssl.o] Fehler 1

Hmm this is not working therefore: yum install openssl openssl-devel openssl-static. Again:

[root@localhost gatling-0.13]# make
pssl.c:9:29: schwerwiegender Fehler: polarssl/havege.h: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
 #include <polarssl/havege.h>
                             ^
Kompilierung beendet.
make: *** [pssl.o] Fehler 1

Ok. Dammn it all to hell I don’t need ssl support. I use cloudflare which does my ssl for me. Futhermore nobody except cloudflare can access my web server. Have a look here for my firewall script which ensures this.

Finally I have a gatling binary. Yay^^

A quick cp gatling /usr/bin/ later I can run my server by calling gatling.

CentOS (systemd)

Now that I have my gatling binary I need to run it at startup. I could add a line in my cron file but I wanted to make it right…ish. CentOS uses systemd and fefe’s strong dislike (warning his blog is in german) notwithstanding I wanted to use it to start and stop my sever. After reading the man page for systemd I came up with the following: Yes it’s not that nice and kinda hackish but it works.

Interim Conclusion

At this point I have a running webserver which can be started by typing systemctl start gatling. Now all I have to do is set up a jekyll website and a git repository so I can modify said website from everywhere. Provided everywhere has a git client and a text editor.

This concludes part 1 have a look here for part 2.