Bodem

Bodem is a simple Gopher server in rust.

Why?

I really like how radically simple the Gopher protocol is. This feature is even more appealing to me today, since these days even a 'simple' web page probably involves a ton of moving parts (e.g. let's encrypt integration, keeping track of vulnerabilities in your dependencies, etc.).

To give you an example of how simple the Gopher protocol really is, here is an example of using netcat to download a file over Gopher:

echo music/never_gonna_give_you_up.mp4 | nc gopher.example.com 70 > rickroll.mp4

I would encourage everyone to read the Gopher RFC 1436 and/or wikipedia entry, if only for an interesting piece of history.

Also, COVID-19 has me quarantined and I wanted to do some nerding :)

Usage

Bodem only has a few configuration options, which you can see in the table below. Basically, you tell it what directory to serve and what port to listen on. Because the gopher protocol has no concept of relative links, bodem also needs to know what address clients can connect to in order to construct working links.

short	long	env	default	description
-l	--listen	BODEM_LISTEN	127.0.0.1:7070	Address to listen on, in the form :.
		BODEM_ROOT	$PWD	Directory to serve.
	--port	BODEM_EXTERNAL_PORT	7070	External port that clients can connect to. Used to construct links.
	--host	BODEM_EXTERNAL_HOST	localhost	External hostname that clients can connect to. Used to construct links.
-h	--help			Print a help message and quit.

Examples

Command	Description
bodem -l 0.0.0.0:70 --host gopher.example.com	Serve the current directory on port 70 (the official gopher port) on all interfaces.
bodem /srv/gopher	Serve the directory /srv/gopher on the default address (127.0.0.1:7070).
bodem -l 172.16.11.135:1234 --host gopher.internal.example.com --port 1234 /some/stuff	Serve the directory /some/stuff on 172.16.11.135:1234 (This of course will only work if you have an interface with this IP address configured).

Building

To build bodem, you'll need Rust and Cargo installed, for which I'll refer to the official documentation, but don't forget to check your local package manager.

Command	Description
cargo build --release	Build a non-debug binary to target/release/bodem.
cargo run	Run a debug build directly.
cargo run --release	Run a non-debug build directly.

Gopher clients

Because Gopher is so simple, you might actually not need a client (as demonstrated in the netcat example above). Having said that, it's still a whole lot nicer to use with a proper client. Wikipedia has a list of clients, but just to get started I'd recommend lynx. Just make sure you prepend the URL with gopher:// (e.g. lynx gopher://localhost:7070) or lynx will default to HTTP.

License

You're free to use, modify and distribute this software under the terms of the MIT license.