anise - All-iN-I SErver  

anise is a pocket-sized network server that provides basic FTP and WWW services to its clients.

Command-line option -tilde or environment variable TILDE_TRANSLATION specify a C format string used to translate "~user" components in URLs. The first "%s" in the string is replaced by the user's name; the second "%s" is replaced by the trailing portion of the URL. For example, if your users' home directories are on the "/home" partition and their web sites are stored in an "html" subdirectory, specify TILDE_TRANSLATION as "/home/%s/html/%s". If no tilde translation is defined, the default is the "~/html" directory of the user running anise.

Environment variable MIME_TYPES specifies a file containing the MIME type mappings used by anise. If this environment variable is not specified, anise attempts to load the mappings from "/etc/mime.types".

The pass-through "protocol" mentioned in the command-line options below was implemented with the thought of using anise as as a proxy server between a news reader and a USENET news server, but I never actually tested or used anise in such a set-up.

Invocation:

% anise [-debug]
        [-daemon]
        [-ftp cport[,dport]]
        [-target server[@host]] [-pass port]
        [-log file] [-tilde format] [-www port]

where

-debug

enables debug output (written to stdout).

-daemon

causes anise to become a daemon process.

-ftp cport[,dport]

specifies (i) a network server port (i.e., service name or port number) at which anise will listen for control connection requests from FTP clients and (ii) a default port for data connections. Multiple server ports can be monitored for control connection requests by repeating this option for each different port. Connections established via the FTP control port, cport, are used to exchange FTP commands and responses between the client and server. Connections established via the FTP data port, dport, are used to exchange data (e.g., file contents) between the client and server; if not specified, the data port defaults to the standard "ftp-data" port (20). The data port capability is used in "active" mode, wherein the FTP server connects to the data port of the client in order to exchange data. This mode of operation is rarely used now for security reasons and I haven't been able to test anise's command-line specification of the default data port as a result. Most FTP clients put the server in "passive" mode; instead of initiating the data connection with the client, the FTP server now listens at a temporary, system-allocated port for a data connection request from the FTP client.

-target server[@host]

specifies the target server for subsequent "-pass port"s.

-pass port

specifies a network server port (i.e., service name or port number) at which anise will listen for connection requests from pass-through clients. Multiple server ports can be monitored for connection requests by repeating this option for each different port.

-log file

enables logging of incoming HTTP requests to a file. This file will be used to log all transactions on WWW ports which are specified (via the "-www" option) after the "-log" option. If the "-log" option has not been specified prior to specifying a port, the port's transactions will not be logged. Different log files can be used for different ports by simply interspersing "-log" options on the command line.

-tilde format

specifies a format string used for tilde translation. The string is of the form, "...%s...%s...", where the "%s"s are replaced by the user's name and the trailing portion of the resource name, respectively.

-www port

specifies a network server port (i.e., service name or port number) at which anise will listen for connection requests from HTTP clients. Multiple server ports can be monitored for connection requests by repeating this option for each different port.