AbsoLUAtion - The powerful combo of Lighttpd + Lua¶

• Table of contents
• AbsoLUAtion - The powerful combo of Lighttpd + Lua
• What's needed for this to work?
• How to get it up and running
• Links
• Code-Snippets
• Fight DDoS
• Small Helpers
• Mod_Security
• other solutions

We want to build a central resource for Lighttpd + Lua as this is one of the biggest advantages Lighttpd has over other webservers. It's useful, handy, simple and sometimes a quite powerful combo which gives you some additional flexibility and offers you solutions to small and big problems other httpds can't solve!

Again we hope you - the users of lighty - support this page by contributing links, code-snippets or simply offer your lua scripts with small descriptions of what they do and how it helps lighty to do stuff you want it to do.

What's needed for this to work?¶

• A recent version of Lighttpd
• mod_magnet
• Lua (v5.0 or better v5.1, your distro´s should have this) http://www.lua.org

How to get it up and running¶

Documentation mod_magnet

Links¶

Link collection (Description -> Link).

• darix is maintaining the cleanurl.lua at http://pixel.global-banlist.de/
• Jippi is maintaining the bundle.lua at http://www.cakephp.nu/faster-page-loads-bundle-your-css-and-javascript-lighttpd-mod_magnet-lua
• http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/04/10/faster-page-loads-bundle-your-css-and-javascript/
• Google CodeSearch is great for looking Lua examples. http://www.google.com/codesearch start your queries with "lang:lua"
• WP-Supercache http://tempe.st/2008/04/lighttpd-and-wp-supercache-now-you-can/
• WP-MultiUser http://www.bisente.com/blog/2007/04/08/lighttpd-wordpressmu-english/
• Dynamically generate thumbnails and cache them http://www.xarg.org/2010/04/dynamic-thumbnail-generation-on-the-static-server/
• LUA Script performing similar job to Mod_Security http://www.whmcr.com/2009/06/lighttpd-mod_security-via-mod_magnet/
• Drupal/OpenAtrium simple cleanurl solution http://sudhaker.com/web-development/drupal/drupal-clean-url-lighttpd.html
  Dead links? You don´t like to be listed here? Please remove it. Thanks!

Code-Snippets¶

The is_file/is_dir dilemma

Known from Apache´s .htaccess:
Hint: see url.rewrite-[repeat-]if-not-file for the !-f part

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]

As lighttpd doesn´t provide this is_file/is_dir check out of the box, again mod_magnet comes into play.

I took the example for drupal from darix site (http://nordisch.org/2007/2/6/drupal-on-lighttpd-with-clean-urls):

Lets assume drupal is already installed under http://example.com/drupal/ you now add the magnet part to it.

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/drupal" {
    # we only need index.php here.
    index-file.names = ( "index.php" )
    # for clean urls
    magnet.attract-physical-path-to = ( "/etc/lighttpd/drupal.lua" )
}

The drupal.lua:

-- little helper function
function file_exists(path)
  local attr = lighty.stat(path)
  if (attr) then
      return true
  else
      return false
  end
end
function removePrefix(str, prefix)
  return str:sub(1,#prefix+1) == prefix.."/" and str:sub(#prefix+2)
end

-- prefix without the trailing slash
local prefix = '/drupal'

-- the magic ;)
if (not file_exists(lighty.env["physical.path"])) then
    -- file still missing. pass it to the fastcgi backend
    request_uri = removePrefix(lighty.env["uri.path"], prefix)
    if request_uri then
      lighty.env["uri.path"]          = prefix .. "/index.php" 
      local uriquery = lighty.env["uri.query"] or "" 
      lighty.env["uri.query"] = uriquery .. (uriquery ~= "" and "&" or "") .. "q=" .. request_uri
      lighty.env["physical.rel-path"] = lighty.env["uri.path"]
      lighty.env["request.orig-uri"]  = lighty.env["request.uri"]
      lighty.env["physical.path"]     = lighty.env["physical.doc-root"] .. lighty.env["physical.rel-path"]
    end
end
-- fallthrough will put it back into the lighty request loop
-- that means we get the 304 handling for free. ;)

Overwrite default mime-type/content-type

Add "magnet.attract-physical-path-to = ( "/path-to/change-ctype.lua" )" to lighttpd.conf and save the following as "change-ctype.lua"

 if (string.match(lighty.env["physical.rel-path"], ".swf")) then
    lighty.header["Content-Type"] = "text/html" 

Sending text-files as HTML

This is a bit simplistic, but it illustrates the idea: Take a text-file and cover it in a "< pre >" tag.

Config-file

  magnet.attract-physical-path-to = (server.docroot + "/readme.lua")

readme.lua

  lighty.content = { "<pre>", { filename = "/README" }, "</pre>" }
  lighty.header["Content-Type"] = "text/html" 

  return 200

Simple maintenance script

You need three files, maint.up, maint.down and maint.html.
maint.html holds a simple html-page of what you want to display to your users while in maintenance-mode.

Add "magnet.attract-physical-path-to = ( "/path-to-your/maint.lua" )" to your lighttpd.conf, best is global section or within a host-section of your config, e.g. a board/forum/wiki you know a maintenance-mode is needed from time to time. If you want to switch to maintenance-mode, just copy maint.down to maint.lua in your "/path-to-your/" location, and lighty will display your maint.html to all users - without restarting anything - this can be done on-the-fly. Work is done and all is up again? Copy maint.up to maint.lua in your "/path-to-your/" location. Whats maint.up doing? Nothing, just going on with normal file serving :-)

maint.up - all is up, user will see normal pages

-- This is empty, nothing to do.

maint.down - lighty will show the maintenance page -> maint.html

-- lighty.header["X-Maintenance-Mode"] = "1" 
-- uncomment the above if you want to add the header
lighty.content = { { filename = "/path-to-your/maint.html" } }
lighty.header["Content-Type"] = "text/html" 
return 503
-- or return 200 if you want

mod_flv_streaming

Config-file

  magnet.attract-physical-path-to = (server.docroot + "/flv-streaming.lua")

flv-streaming.lua

  if (lighty.env["uri.query"]) then
    -- split the query-string
    get = {}
    for k, v in string.gmatch(lighty.env["uri.query"], "(%w+)=(%w+)") do
      get[k] = v
    end

    header="" 
    if (get and get["start"]) then
      start = tonumber(get["start"])
    else
      start=0
    end

    -- send te FLV header only when seeking + a seek into the file
    if (start ~= nil and start > 0) then
      header="FLV\1\1\0\0\0\9\0\0\0\9" 
    end

    lighty.content = { header , 
       { filename = lighty.env["physical.path"], offset = start } }
    lighty.header["Content-Type"] = "video/x-flv" 

    return 200

  end

You can also use a backend like php to use your own authorization or stuff like mod_secdl. Just activate x-rewrite in the backend configuration and use a header like

  header("X-Rewrite-URI: flvstreaming?start=" . $start . "&path=" . $path);

The request is restarted and in the lua, you can catch the non-existing uri with the following code (wrap it between the example below)::

  if (string.find(lighty.env["uri.path"],"/flvstreaming") then
    <flv streaming lua code>
  end

In the future, there will be a new magnet for response headers, maybe you can give your own headers like::

  header("X-StreamMyFlv: $path");

to lua and use the header data as parameter for the streaming.

selecting a random file from a directory

Say, you want to send a random file (ad-content) from a directory.

To simplify the code and to improve the performance we define:

• all images have the same format (e.g. image/png)
• all images use increasing numbers starting from 1
• a special index-file names the highest number

Config

  server.modules += ( "mod_magnet" )
  magnet.attract-physical-path-to = ("random.lua")

random.lua

  dir = lighty.env["physical.path"]

  f = assert(io.open(dir .. "/index", "r"))
  maxndx = f:read("*all")
  f:close()

  ndx = math.random(maxndx)

  lighty.content = { { filename = dir .. "/" .. ndx }}
  lighty.header["Content-Type"] = "image/png" 

  return 200  

denying illegal character sequences in the URL

Instead of implementing mod_security, you might just want to apply filters on the content and deny special sequences that look like SQL injection.

A common injection is using UNION to extend a query with another SELECT query.

  if (string.find(lighty.env["request.uri"], "UNION%s")) then
    return 400
  end

Traffic Quotas

If you only allow your virtual hosts a certain amount for traffic each month and want to disable them if the traffic is reached, perhaps this helps:

  host_blacklist = { ["www.example.org"] = 0 }

  if (host_blacklist[lighty.request["Host"]]) then
    return 404
  end

Just add the hosts you want to blacklist into the blacklist table in the shown way.

Complex rewrites

If you want to implement caching on your document-root and only want to regenerate content if the requested file doesn't exist, you can attract the physical.path:

  magnet.attract-physical-path-to = ( server.document-root + "/rewrite.lua" )

rewrite.lua

  attr = lighty.stat(lighty.env["physical.path"])

  if (not attr) then
    -- we couldn't stat() the file for some reason
    -- let the backend generate it

    lighty.env["uri.path"] = "/dispatch.fcgi" 
    lighty.env["physical.rel-path"] = lighty.env["uri.path"]
    lighty.env["physical.path"] = lighty.env["physical.doc-root"] .. lighty.env["physical.rel-path"]
  end

Extension rewrites

If you want to hide your file extensions (like .php) you can attract the physical.path:

  magnet.attract-physical-path-to = ( server.document-root + "/rewrite.lua" )

rewrite.lua

  attr = lighty.stat(lighty.env["physical.path"] .. ".php")

  if (attr) then
    lighty.env["uri.path"] = lighty.env["uri.path"] .. ".php" 
    lighty.env["physical.rel-path"] = lighty.env["uri.path"]
    lighty.env["physical.path"] = lighty.env["physical.doc-root"] .. lighty.env["physical.rel-path"]
  end

User tracking

... or how to store data globally in the script-context:

Each script has its own script-context. When the script is started it only contains the lua-functions and the special lighty.* name-space. If you want to save data between script runs, you can use the global-script context:

  if (nil == _G["usertrack"]) then
    _G["usertrack"] = {}
  end
  if (nil == _G["usertrack"][lighty.request["Cookie"]]) then
    _G["usertrack"][lighty.request["Cookie"]]
  else 
    _G["usertrack"][lighty.request["Cookie"]] = _G["usertrack"][lighty.request["Cookie"]] + 1
  end

  print _G["usertrack"][lighty.request["Cookie"]]

The global-context is per script. If you update the script without restarting the server, the context will still be maintained.

Fight DDoS¶

If your Server is under high load because of someone is flooding you with requests, a little bit lua might help you. ;) In our case we've got a lot of requests without a User-Agent in the request header.

if ( lighty.request["User-Agent"]== nil ) then
        file = io.open ("ips.txt","a")
        file:write(lighty.env["request.remote-ip"])
        file:write("\n")
        file:close()
        return 200
end

The field request.remote-ip is available since Lighttpd 1.4.23. The file ips.txt must be writeable by the lighttpd user (www-data). The bad guys in the ips.txt file can be dropped into the firewall with a little shell script.

Small Helpers¶

...

Mod_Security¶

Apache has mod_security available as a WAF (web application firewall) however this isn't available for other webservers. I've written a quick and dirty script to perform a similar task to mod_security using mod_magnet
http://www.whmcr.com/2009/06/lighttpd-mod_security-via-mod_magnet/

other solutions¶

external-static

I´ve seen this nice solution somewhere where they host some files locally on their machines. If popularity gets to high, files are too big or for whatever reasons the files are moved to i think it was amazon´s S3 or akamai for faster serving or to cope with high traffic. You still can use your hostname, urls, collect stats from your logs - your users are just redirected with a 302 to the files they ask for.

2008-11-17: Found the source: http://blog.innerfence.com/2008/05/31/presto-move-content-to-s3-with-no-code-changes/

Request -> check for local copy -> 302 (if not stored locally) -> let users download from a big pipe

Add the following to your lighttpd.conf:

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/static/[^/]+[.]gif([?].*)?$" { #match the files you want this to work for
  magnet.attract-physical-path-to = ( "/path-to-your/external-static.lua" )
}

Save the following to external-static.lua:

 local filename = lighty.env["physical.path"]
 local stat = lighty.stat( filename )
  if not stat then
   local static_name = string.match( filename, "static/([^/]+)$" )
   lighty.header["Location"] = "http://<new-location-with-big-pipes>/" .. static_name
 return 302
end