Lighttpd webserver

LuCI is the main web administration utility for OpenWrt. By default LuCI uses uHTTPd.

Lighttpd is a highly-configurable, lightweight web server. See lighttpd and https://www.lighttpd.net/. There are many modules available for lighttpd that can be installed and configured. For more information on the modules see https://redmine.lighttpd.net/projects/lighttpd/wiki/docs. This article explains how to get lighttpd working on OpenWrt.

Consult luci.on.lighttpd to make lighttpd serve the LuCI web interface.

Execute

opkg list lighttpd*

to see what packages are available.

Use opkg

opkg update
opkg install lighttpd

Edit /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

To get a basic server running make the following changes to /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf:

Server Root Directory

server.document-root = "/www/"

where the www is the root directory of the web server.

Enable Logging

Uncomment (remove #) the following line so errors are written to the log:

server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log"

Set Server Port

Uncomment the following line:

server.port = 8000

where 8000 is the port you want your webserver on.

• Set up a LAMP stack on OpenWrt
• WebDAV with Lighttpd on OpenWRT

1. First, follow php to install a version of PHP
2. Second, follow lighttpd1 to configure lighttpd
3. Third, to get PHP running with Lighttpd you need to install the package 'lighttpd-mod-cgi'

To enable/disable start on boot:

/etc/init.d/lighttpd enable this simply creates a symlink: /etc/rc.d/S80lighttpd → /etc/init.d/lighttpd /etc/init.d/lighttpd disable this removes the symlink again

To start the server one time:

/etc/init.d/lighttpd start

To stop the server again:

/etc/init.d/lighttpd stop

To allow users on the WAN to access the server, make sure to configure the firewall in /etc/config/firewall and port forwarding settings.

config redirect
        option src              wan
        option src_dport        80
        option dest             lan
        option dest_ip          192.168.1.1
        option dest_port        8000
        option proto            tcp

config rule
        option src              wan
        option dest_port        8000
        option target           ACCEPT
        option proto            tcp

Restart the firewall with the following command: /etc/init.d/firewall restart

Add virtual hosts via mod_simple_vhost

The goal is to run only one server on port 80. At the same time, this server should distinguish between different websites or directories. First, the Lighttpd server is configured as described. It must be ensured that the server works on port 80 (or any other port). In my example, the local domain suffix was specified with “h” (see dnsmasq configuration).

Now add the following entries to your file: /etc/config/dhcp

config domain
      option name 'luci'
      option ip '192.168.1.1'
 
config domain
      option name 'home'
      option ip '192.168.1.1'

Add Module mod_simple_vhost to your: /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf server.modules = ( “mod_simple_vhost”, )

Create virtual host Configuration: /etc/lighttpd/conf.d/IntraNet.conf

$HTTP["host"] =~ "^luci.h(\:[0-9]*)?$" { 
    dir-listing.activate = "disable" 
    server.document-root = "/www/"
    $HTTP["url"] =~ "^/cgi-bin" {
        cgi.assign += ( "" => "" )
    }
}

$HTTP["host"] =~ "^home.h(\:[0-9]*)?$" { 
    dir-listing.activate = "enable" 
    server.document-root = "/www/Home/"	
    url.redirect = ( "^/config/" => "/www/status-403.html",
                    "^/data/" => "/www/status-403.html",
                  )
}

Restarted dnsmasq and lighttpd: /etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart; /etc/init.d/lighttpd restart;

Via the address luci.h the configuration can now be called, and another website via home.h The IntraNet.conf can be extended with more virtual host names. Within virtual host you can configure host specific configurations.

You can also configure Internet Websites with this, like example.org or second.example.org

Make sure that the browser cache is deleted, often a new presence did not work because there is still some old information in the cache.

Incorrect Event Handler

If you get the following error:

(server.c.1105) fdevent_init failed

you might need to set the event handler explicitly for your system. Add the following line to the configuration file:

server.event-handler = "poll"

See https://redmine.lighttpd.net/projects/lighttpd/wiki/Server.event-handlerDetails

Note that lighttpd does not support .htaccess files as some web servers do to configure directory specific server settings. Instead, it uses a centrally configured system using lighttpd.conf to define all settings, using powerful matching functions. This still means that you have to manually set up directory settings. Especially for (opkg) packages that supply .htaccess files to define required settings. Allowing directory listings is one example that should be disabled or enabled as per the required security level.