GMID(1) General Commands Manual GMID(1)

gmid — simple and secure Gemini server

gmid [-fnv] [-c config] [-D macro=value] [-P pidfile]

gmid [-6hVv] [-d certs-dir] [-H hostname] [-p port] [-x cgi] [dir]

gmid is a simple and minimal gemini server that can serve static files, execute CGI scripts and talk to FastCGI applications. It can run without a configuration file with a limited set of features available.

gmid rereads the configuration file when it receives SIGHUP.

The options are as follows:

config
Specify the configuration file.
macro=value
Define macro to be set to value on the command line. Overrides the definition of macro in the config file if present.
Stays and logs on the foreground.
Check that the configuration is valid, but don't start the server. If specified two or more time, dump the configuration in addition to verify it.
pidfile
Write daemon's pid to the given location. pidfile will also act as lock: if another process is holding a lock on that file, gmid will refuse to start.

If no configuration file is given, gmid runs in “config-less mode” (i.e. runs in the foreground to serve a directory from the shell) and looks for the following options

Enable IPv6.
certs-path
Directory where certificates for the config-less mode are stored. By default it is $XDG_DATA_HOME/gmid, i.e. ~/.local/share/gmid.
hostname
The hostname (localhost by default). Certificates for the given hostname are searched inside the certs-dir directory given with the -d option. They have the form hostname.cert.pem and hostname.key.pem. If a certificate or a key doesn't exist for a given hostname, they will be generated automatically.
, --help
Print the usage and exit.
port
The port to listen on, by default 1965.
, --version
Print the version and exit.
Verbose mode. Multiple -v options increase the verbosity.
path
Enable execution of CGI scripts. See the description of the cgi option in the ‘Servers’ section below to learn how path is processed. Cannot be provided more than once.
dir
The root directory to serve. By default the current working directory is assumed.

Messages and requests are logged by syslog(3) using the DAEMON facility or printed on .

Requests are logged with the NOTICE severity. Each request log entry has the following fields, separated by whitespace:

Serve the current directory

$ gmid .

To serve the directory docs and enable CGI scripts inside docs/cgi

$ mkdir docs/cgi
$ cat <<EOF > docs/cgi/hello
#!/bin/sh
printf "20 text/plain\r\n"
echo "hello world"
EOF
$ chmod +x docs/cgi/hello
$ gmid -x '/cgi/*' docs

To run gmid as a deamon a configuration file and a X.509 certificate must be provided. A self-signed certificate, which are commonly used in the Geminispace, can be generated using for e.g. openssl(1):

# openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -nodes \
	-keyout /etc/ssl/private/example.com.key \
	-out /etc/ssl/example.com.pem \
	-days 365 -subj "/CN=example.com"
# chmod 600 /etc/ssl/example.com.crt
# chmod 600 /etc/ssl/private/example.com.key

Then gmid can be started with

# gmid -c /etc/gmid.conf

gmid.conf(5)

gmid uses the “Flexible and Economical” UTF-8 decoder written by Bjoern Hoehrmann.

The gmid program was written by Omar Polo <op@omarpolo.com>.

April 7, 2022 OpenBSD 7.1