Some progress with httpd on Busybox 1.1.3

Thu Feb 11 06:21:13 UTC 2010

On Wednesday 10 February 2010 22:41:22 Pete Helgren wrote:
> A little bit of success but I still don't think I have things properly
> configured.
>
> Did the following:
>
> created a folder /www and created an index.html file in the folder.  I
> also created an httpd.conf file but it has no *uncommented* entries at
> the moment.
> Note: Most of the information came from this thread:
> http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2004-November/013050.html
>
> I invoke httpd with this command:
>
> /bin/busybox httpd -c /etc/httpd.conf -h /www

Hmmm, grab my current busybox binary...

  ./busybox httpd --help

read read read...

  ./httpd -p 4096 -f -v

In another window:

  wget http://127.0.0.1:4096

Which gave me a 404 error, so:

  echo "hello world" > index.html

And try again...  And now I get hello world.

It seems to be working for me out of the box?  I didn't try feeding it a 
.config file or specifying a home directory other than the current one...

> Eventually it returns:
>
> HTTP/1.0 408 Request Timeout
> Content-type: text/html
> Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:30:51 GMT
> Connection: close
>
> <HEAD><TITLE>408 Request Timeout</TITLE></HEAD>
> <BODY><H1>408 Request Timeout</H1>
> No request appeared within a reasonable time period.
> </BODY>

Define "it".  Did httpd say that, or did your web browser say that?

Try adding -f and -v to your httpd to get it to stay in the foreground and be 
verbose.

> So *something* is going on but I can't get a page to display using the
> browser.  It could be a permissions issue with the files I ftp'ed for
> the index.htm and httpd.conf but I am not sure.
>
> So I need a bit of help sorting this out and would like the following
> information as well (remember this is Busybox 1.1.3):

Ah.  Sorry, I wasn't paying attention and missed the "1.1.3" bit.  That 
version's around 4 years old now, I don't think we remember off the top of our 
heads what was and wasn't in that version.

I do know a lot of breakage has since been fixed and cleanups made.  (Back then 
httpd was maintained by an insane russian who posted and read messages via 
translation software instead of actually learning english, and freaked if 
anyone else touched "his" code.  I'm kind of amazed that version ever worked 
for anybody, really.)

> 1.Entries needed in inetd.conf to properly start the http daemon
> automatically
> 2.How to change the port configuration (I assume I would have to set a
> value in httpd.conf.
>
> I am getting close, just a few more pointers should do it.

I hate to say this, but you've hit another FAQ:

  http://busybox.net/FAQ.html#backporting

Rob
-- 
Latency is more important than throughput. It's that simple. - Linus Torvalds