Re: RFC: inetd httpd-facility for dwww/dhelp

[Jim Pick <jim@jimpick.com>]

Christian Hammers <ch@lathspell.westend.com> writes:

> Hello 
> 
> I belive many people do not use dwww because they won't install their
> own web server. 
> So if we would have a very-small HTTP server which would be started
> by inetd and only serve Debian's documentation every body could use it.
> And this server wouldn't even consume any memory/cpu if not used.
> 
> This debhttpd should be very easy to program since it does only need to
> call the CGI's and output the resulting pages.
> Examples of such servers are:
> 	swat (Samba configuration tool)
> 	wwwoffle (Proxy cache with config/index/cache-search facility)
> 	<some configure-everything tool>
> I think even if we do not find any "ready" solution we could do it with
> libwww-perl.
> 
> 
> This would be the final solution for all our "which document system to use"
> problems - And we would even be better than "the others" :-)
> 
> Any suggestions ?

Sounds like a good idea.  There are already several web servers in
Debian that can be configured that way.

Personally, I'd like to see a new web server policy.  For example, I'd
like to see all webservers we supply configured for localhost access
only - leave it to the end user to add on virtual hosts or change the
security settings.  Perhaps we could have an automated tool (debconf?)
for setting up external webservers.

For dwww, we don't even really need a web server...

I've actually done some work on my next-generation version of dwww
(Python-based) that uses the lynxcgi feature of lynx.

Lynx can be configured to run CGI scripts directly - without using
HTTP.  It's limited, but it works quite well for dwww.

Of course, I still want to preserve the ability of dwww to work with a
web server.

Also, since we're working with open source here, it should be possible
to add the ability to execute lynxcgi scripts to other open source
browsers, such as Mozilla and the Gnome help browser.

Cheers,

 - Jim