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Show HN: Hosting my website using my C web server

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Re: Show HN: Hosting my website using my C web server

#111

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

xmodem wrote: post #70

> No reverse proxies required! This is one that has always baffled me. If there's no specific reason that a reverse proxy is helpful, I will often hang an app with an embedded Jetty out on the internet without one. This has never lead to any problems. Infra or security people will see this and ask why I don't have an nginx instance in front of it. When I ask why I need one, the answers are all hand-wavy security or p…

At one job, Nginx facilitated blue-green deployments. I would spin up a 2nd app server and have Nginx cut-over to it with I automated all that with a few scripts that included sanity checks with `nginx -t`. After the update looked good I would shut down the old app server without any time crunch. Only the Nginx config was time-sensitive.

I'm not sure if you can do that without some kind of reverse proxy as an abstraction layer. At least a TCP-level proxy.

And as everyone said, virtual hosting.

Re: Show HN: Hosting my website using my C web server

#112

Post by pengaru »

xmodem wrote: post #70

> No reverse proxies required! This is one that has always baffled me. If there's no specific reason that a reverse proxy is helpful, I will often hang an app with an embedded Jetty out on the internet without one. This has never lead to any problems. Infra or security people will see this and ask why I don't have an nginx instance in front of it. When I ask why I need one, the answers are all hand-wavy security or p…

It's a lot easier to isolate and de-privilege your reverse proxy that needs to do nothing more than speak http/https with the outside world and some local listeners.

The url-specific web servers you're proxying tend to need a whole lot more, at least filesystem access to serve html content, at most program execution like CGIs and interpreters.

Separating these concerns makes a lot of sense, and brings little to no overhead by modern standards.

Re: Show HN: Hosting my website using my C web server

#113

Post by folmar »

ironhaven wrote: post #16
SPascareli13 wrote: post #9

Only 3.4k of C code for a full http and https server? I honestly thought you would need a lot more for it to be fully compliant with the spec.

Http/1.1 is dead simple if you ignore most of the spec. If you only take get requests and set content-length on response you will be good for 99% of user agents. It’s not much more code to handle the transfer-encoding and byte-range headers. HTTPS is just http over a tls socket which is the level of abstraction you should have if you don’t roll your own crypto. It’s fun and not that bad really.

And TLS can be handle by kernel if you target linux only. https://docs.kernel.org/networking/tls.html

Re: Show HN: Hosting my website using my C web server

#114

Post by MayeulC »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #111
xmodem wrote: post #70

> No reverse proxies required! This is one that has always baffled me. If there's no specific reason that a reverse proxy is helpful, I will often hang an app with an embedded Jetty out on the internet without one. This has never lead to any problems. Infra or security people will see this and ask why I don't have an nginx instance in front of it. When I ask why I need one, the answers are all hand-wavy security or p…

At one job, Nginx facilitated blue-green deployments. I would spin up a 2nd app server and have Nginx cut-over to it with I automated all that with a few scripts that included sanity checks with `nginx -t`. After the update looked good I would shut down the old app server without any time crunch. Only the Nginx config was time-sensitive. I'm not sure if you can do that without some kind of reverse proxy as an abstrac…

In theory, you can do even better with no reverse proxy: hand down the open sockets to the new version of your application, zero downtime at all. (Nothing prevents you from having a reverse proxy in front while doing that).

Re: Show HN: Hosting my website using my C web server

#115

Post by MayeulC »

dartos wrote: post #84
xmodem wrote: post #70

> No reverse proxies required! This is one that has always baffled me. If there's no specific reason that a reverse proxy is helpful, I will often hang an app with an embedded Jetty out on the internet without one. This has never lead to any problems. Infra or security people will see this and ask why I don't have an nginx instance in front of it. When I ask why I need one, the answers are all hand-wavy security or p…

I run many server programs on my homelab. Each is running on a different port, but I want them all accessible publicly from different URLs and I only want to expose port 443 to the internet. I also want to have TLS autorefresh for each domain. I need a reverse proxy for the former and caddy does both. If you’re running a single server and that server does TLS termination then you don’t really need a reverse proxy.

You forgot the original need: share a single IPv4 among different services.

If going IPv6-only, the need for a reverse proxy is seriously lowered. You could spin multiple servers up (even on different machines), listening to 443. Have each service handle its certificate renewal, etc.

Re: Show HN: Hosting my website using my C web server

#116

Post by anamexis »

MayeulC wrote: post #115
dartos wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run many server programs on my homelab. Each is running on a different port, but I want them all accessible publicly from different URLs and I only want to expose port 443 to the internet. I also want to have TLS autorefresh for each domain. I need a reverse proxy for the former and caddy does both. If you’re running a single server and that server does TLS termination then you don’t really need a reverse proxy.

You forgot the original need: share a single IPv4 among different services. If going IPv6-only, the need for a reverse proxy is seriously lowered. You could spin multiple servers up (even on different machines), listening to 443. Have each service handle its certificate renewal, etc.

> You forgot the original need: share a single IPv4 among different services.

That "original need" is exactly what GP is talking about.

Re: Show HN: Hosting my website using my C web server

#117

Post by theideaofcoffee »

ryandrake wrote: post #101
yard2010 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working with c/cpp in uni exploded my mind. It's such a specific humbling experience that has a bit of anything I love - engineering, history, culture, linguistics, etc. It made me think that anyone should know and try every possible language (programming or otherwise) - "thinking" in a language is such a unique experience. The different contexts make everything feel different, even though it's more of the same. The…

It’s kind of sad how C has gotten the reputation as this dangerous and scary dark art that only wizards can successfully wield. C was my first love, it’s what we used throughout university, it’s what our operating systems and basic tools are all written in... If you go to your favorite language and step down into the actual implementation of, for example, your network calls, you’re eventually going to get to poll() a…

Same, it was my first language that I got real fluent in. And I feel the same when the prevailing sentiment now is that you're 100% guaranteed to shoot your foot off and make your dog sick if you even look at some C code. I think it's harmful, because wielded responsibly it's super powerful. We shouldn't be discouraging something because it's hard to master, we should be encouraging discretion. And that discretion may take you to a memory-safe language, you may stick with C or something similarly low-level, it all depends.

Re: Show HN: Hosting my website using my C web server

#118

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

ryandrake wrote: post #101
yard2010 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working with c/cpp in uni exploded my mind. It's such a specific humbling experience that has a bit of anything I love - engineering, history, culture, linguistics, etc. It made me think that anyone should know and try every possible language (programming or otherwise) - "thinking" in a language is such a unique experience. The different contexts make everything feel different, even though it's more of the same. The…

It’s kind of sad how C has gotten the reputation as this dangerous and scary dark art that only wizards can successfully wield. C was my first love, it’s what we used throughout university, it’s what our operating systems and basic tools are all written in... If you go to your favorite language and step down into the actual implementation of, for example, your network calls, you’re eventually going to get to poll() a…

But if the dy/dx gradient is that experts can develop faster in safe languages, and novices make fewer mistakes in safe languages, then C isn't useful day-to-day.

It occupies an ever-shrinking ecological niche on the Pareto frontier.

Re: Show HN: Hosting my website using my C web server

#119

Post by didip »

xmodem wrote: post #70

> No reverse proxies required! This is one that has always baffled me. If there's no specific reason that a reverse proxy is helpful, I will often hang an app with an embedded Jetty out on the internet without one. This has never lead to any problems. Infra or security people will see this and ask why I don't have an nginx instance in front of it. When I ask why I need one, the answers are all hand-wavy security or p…

Reverse proxy is the OG sidecar. You get N number of useful functionalities that doesn't need to live in your primary app, for example: TLS cert handling.
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