Re: [Leaf-devel] Re: [leaf-user] Webbased configuration

[Ewald W. <ewa...@po...>]

On Fri, 2002-08-30 at 21:40, Charles Steinkuehler wrote:
> 
> I'm well aware of mini_httpd, but it's 40K...sh-httpd is about 9K
> (including the conf file), and it's text so it compresses well in *.lrp
> packages!
>

Agreed!
 
> There's also micro_httpd, but it won't do CGI...
> 
> You can "wrap" most any inetd based webserver (including sh-httpd) to
> get ssl support, if you can afford the space.
> 
> > > I can commit to any updates/modifications to sh-httpd that may be
> > > required.  I think it's possible to dramatically increase the CGI
> > > response of the existing sh-httpd when running CGI's, which would be
> a
> > > big help for a CGI driven admin interface.
> > >
> >
> > I haven't looked at sh-httpd recently, but some form of authentication
> > may be a good idea if it's used for a configuration interface.
> 
> IMHO, this should probably happen outside the web-server.  I could code
> basic authentication into sh-httpd, but that's never really going to be
> secure.  I'd suggest either using an authenticating (and possibly
> encrypting) front-end like ssh, or off-loading authentication to the
> system (ie running su as part of the CGI scripts, and providing the root
> or an admin password) while encourgaing the use of encryption (ssh,
> zeebee, or similar) if accessing remotely to prevent clear-text
> passwords traversing the 'net.
> 
> > I'll have a look a forth first. I did come across a small forth
> > interpreter here (eforth):
> >
> > http://www.lxhp.in-berlin.de/index-lx.shtml
> >
> > I just built it, and the static executable is 22k small. Compare that
> to
> 
> Yep...apx 20K for a *POWERFUL* scripting language that allows you direct
> access to kernel system calls!  The code isn't pretty to look at, and
> it's pretty cryptic if you're not passably familiar with the notation.
> I especially like the kernel level forth also at the site above...one of
> the current big Forth applications is "Open Firmware", which is how Suns
> and several other systems (including most PPC systems, IIRC)
> boot...rather than native code, the firmware roms on various plug-in
> cards contain small forth routines, which both saves space, and allows
> CPU/OS independent boot-strap code (of course, native compiled &
> optimized drivers are loaded once the system is boot-strapped).  I can
> see something similar being useful for boot-strapping LEAF w/o having to
> have 100K shell and 500K of libc...not to write hardware drivers, but to
> build/extract the initial ramdisk, do the "kernel-two-step" switch-a-roo
> to allow booting a selectable kernel w/o custom CD imgaes, and other
> things that are difficult to do with plain shell-script.
> 

That sounds good too, but who is going to code such a thing for LEAF?


Ewald Wasscher