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+---
+title: "Bringing all of my projects together under one umbrella"
+url: bringing-all-of-my-projects-together-under-one-umbrella.html
+date: 2023-07-01T18:49:07+02:00
+type: post
+draft: false
+---
+
+## What is the issue anyway?
+
+Over the years, I have accumulated a bunch of virtual servers on my
+[DigitalOcean](https://www.digitalocean.com/) account for small experimental
+projects I dabble in. And this has resulted in quite a bill. I mean, I wouldn't
+care if these projects were actually being used. But there were just being there
+unused and wasting resources. Which makes this an unnecessary burden for me.
+
+Most of them are just small HTML pages that have an endpoint or two to read data
+from or to, and for that reason I wrote servers left and right. To be honest,
+all of those things could have been done with [CGI
+scripts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface) and that would
+have been more than enough.
+
+Recently, I decided to stop language hopping and focus on a simpler stack which
+includes C, Go and Lua. And I can accomplish all the things I am interested in.
+
+## Finding a web server replacement
+
+Usually I had [Nginx](https://nginx.org/en/) in front of these small web servers
+and I had to manage SSL certificates and all that jazz. I am bored with these
+things. I don't want to manage any of this bullshit anymore.
+
+So the logical move forward was to find a solid alternative for this. I have
+ended up on [Caddy server](https://caddyserver.com/). I've used it in the past
+but kind of forgotten about it. What I really like about it is an ease of use
+and a bunch of out of the box functionalities that come with it.
+
+These are the _pitch_ points from their website:
+
+- **Secure by Default**: Caddy is the only web server that uses HTTPS by
+  default. A hardened TLS stack with modern protocols preserves privacy and
+  exposes MITM attacks.
+- **Config API**: As its primary mode of configuration, Caddy's REST API makes
+  it easy to automate and integrate with your apps.
+- **No Dependencies**: Because Caddy is written in Go, its binaries are entirely
+  self-contained and run on every platform, including containers without libc.
+- **Modular Stack**: Take back control over your compute edge. Caddy can be
+  extended with everything you need using plugins.
+
+I had just a few requirements:
+
+- Automatic SSL
+- Static file server
+- Basic authentication
+- CGI script support
+
+And the vanilla version does all of it, but CGI scripts. But that can easily be
+fixed with their modular approach. You can do this on their website and build a
+custom version of the server, or do it with Docker.
+
+This is a `Dockerfile` I used to build a custom server.
+
+```Dockerfile
+FROM caddy:builder AS builder
+
+RUN xcaddy build \
+  --with github.com/aksdb/caddy-cgi
+
+FROM caddy:latest
+RUN apk add --no-cache nano
+
+COPY --from=builder /usr/bin/caddy /usr/bin/caddy
+```
+
+## Getting rid of all the unnecessary virtual machines
+
+The next step was to get a handle on the number of virtual servers I have all
+over the place.
+
+I decided to move all the projects and services into two main VMs:
+
+- personal server (still Nginx)
+  - git server
+  - static file server
+  - personal blog
+- projects server (Caddy server)
+  - personal experiments
+  - other projects
+
+I will focus on projects' server in this post since it's more interesting.
+
+## Testing CGI scripts
+
+The first thing I tested was how CGI scripts work under Caddy. This is
+particularly import to me because almost all of my experiments and mini projects
+need this to work.
+
+To configure Caddy server, you must provide the server with a configuration
+file. By default, it's called `Caaddyfile`.
+
+```caddyfile
+{
+  order cgi before respond
+}
+
+examples.mitjafelicijan.com {
+  cgi /bash-test /opt/projects/examples/bash-test.sh
+  cgi /tcl-test /opt/projects/examples/tcl-test.tcl
+  cgi /lua-test /opt/projects/examples/lua-test.lua
+  cgi /python-test /opt/projects/examples/python-test.py
+
+  root * /opt/projects/examples
+  file_server
+}
+```
+
+- The order is very important. Make sure that `order cgi before respond` is at
+  the top of the configuration file.
+- Also, when you run with Caddy v2, make sure you provide `adapter` argument
+  like this `/usr/bin/caddy run --watch --environ --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile
+  --adapter caddyfile`. Otherwise, Caddy will try to use a different format for
+  config file.
+
+I did a small batch of tests with [Bash](https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/),
+[Tcl](https://www.tcl-lang.org/), [Lua](https://www.lua.org/) and
+[Python](https://www.python.org/). Here is a cheat sheet if you need it.
+
+Let's get Bash out of the way first.
+
+```bash
+#!/usr/bin/bash
+
+printf "Content-type: text/plain\n\n"
+
+printf "Hello from Bash\n\n"
+printf "PATH_INFO     [%s]\n" $PATH_INFO
+printf "QUERY_STRING  [%s]\n" $QUERY_STRING
+printf "\n"
+
+for i in {0..9..1}; do
+  printf "> %s\n" $i
+done
+
+exit 0
+```
+
+This one is for Tcl script.
+
+```tcl
+#!/usr/bin/tclsh
+
+puts "Content-type: text/plain\n"
+
+puts "Hello from Tcl\n"
+puts "PATH_INFO     \[$env(PATH_INFO)\]"
+puts "QUERY_STRING  \[$env(QUERY_STRING)\]"
+puts ""
+
+for {set i 0} {$i < 10} {incr i} {
+  puts "> $i"
+}
+```
+
+And for all you Python enjoyers.
+
+```python
+#!/usr/bin/python3
+
+import os
+
+print("Content-type: text/plain\n")
+
+print("Hello from Python\n")
+print("PATH_INFO     [{}]".format(os.environ['PATH_INFO']))
+print("QUERY_STRING  [{}]".format(os.environ['QUERY_STRING']))
+print("")
+
+for i in range(10):
+  print("> {}".format(i))
+```
+
+And for the final example, Lua.
+
+```lua
+#!/usr/bin/lua
+
+print("Content-type: text/plain\n")
+
+print("Hello from Lua\n")
+print(string.format("PATH_INFO     [%s]", os.getenv("PATH_INFO")))
+print(string.format("QUERY_STRING  [%s]", os.getenv("QUERY_STRING")))
+print()
+
+for i = 0, 9 do
+  print(string.format("> %d", i))
+end
+```
+
+## Basic authentication
+
+One thing was also to have an option for some sort of authentication, and
+something like [Basic access
+authentication](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_access_authentication) would
+be more than enough.
+
+Thankfully, Caddy supports this out of the box already. Below is an updated
+example.
+
+```Caddyfile
+{
+    order cgi before respond
+}
+
+examples.mitjafelicijan.com {
+  cgi /bash-test /opt/projects/examples/bash-test.sh
+  cgi /tcl-test /opt/projects/examples/tcl-test.tcl
+  cgi /lua-test /opt/projects/examples/lua-test.lua
+  cgi /python-test /opt/projects/examples/python-test.py
+
+  root * /opt/projects/examples
+  file_server
+
+  basicauth * {
+    bob $2a$14$/wCgaf9oMnmQa20txB76u.nI1AldGMBT/1J7fXCfgOiRShwz/JOkK
+  }
+}
+```
+
+`basicauth *` matches everything under this domain/sub-domain and protects it
+with Basic Authentication.
+
+- `bob` is the username
+- `hash` is the password
+
+To generate these passwords, execute `caddy hash-password` and this will prompt
+you to insert a password twice and spit out a hashed password that you can put
+in your configuration file.
+
+Restart the server and you are ready to go.
+
+## Making Caddy a service with systemd
+
+After the tests were successful, I copied `caddy` to `/usr/bin/caddy` and copied
+`Caddyfile` to `/etc/caddy/Caddyfile`.
+
+Now off to the systemd. Each systemd service requires you to create a service
+file.
+
+- I created a `/etc/systemd/system/caddy.service` and put the following content
+  in the file.
+
+```systemd
+[Unit]
+Description=Caddy
+Documentation=https://caddyserver.com/docs/
+After=network.target network-online.target
+Requires=network-online.target
+
+[Service]
+Type=notify
+User=root
+Group=root
+ExecStart=/usr/bin/caddy run --environ --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile --adapter caddyfile
+ExecReload=/usr/bin/caddy reload --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile --force --adapter caddyfile
+TimeoutStopSec=5s
+LimitNOFILE=1048576
+LimitNPROC=512
+PrivateTmp=true
+ProtectSystem=full
+AmbientCapabilities=CAP_NET_ADMIN CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE
+
+[Install]
+WantedBy=multi-user.target
+```
+
+- You might need to reload systemd with `systemctl daemon-reload`.
+- Then I enabled the service with `systemctl enable caddy.service`.
+- And then I started the service with `systemctl start caddy.service`.
+
+This was about all that I needed to do to get it running. Now I can easily add
+new subdomains and domains to the main configuration file and be done with
+it. No manual Let's Encrypt shenanigans needed.