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ESP8266: Gemini Server Setup

My journey to hosting gemini capsule on a microcontroller.

Looking at the Gemini Protocol principles ESP8266 fits perfectly as a low-end server dedicating to one, simple capsule (<512KB).

It uses so little power it can run on batteries! But I keep mine connected to the big server USB port.

The road was not rossy at all. It was a series of mistakes, unknowns and missinformation.

At the end I got everything working and I wanted to share this knowlege for all of you!

Server image [27KB]

Setup

Software nad Hardware

I'm using the cheapest ESP8266 with a simple USB-to-TTY adapter. The only thing I did was to add a button for easy flashing.

Read the Ready to go Setup to get started

Generating keys

I found out that this simple computer can not handle big/secure RSA keys like 4096. The size of 512 works fine.

openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:512 -keyout key.rsa -out cert.pem -days 3650 -nodes -subj "/CN=your.domain.com"

Remember to change "your.domain.com". This will be the domain you got registered and setup (with SSL) on your server already.

After that you will get key.rsa and cert.pem. Content of those files will be needed in next steps.

Get the content ready to copy and paste:

$ cat key.rsa
-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
ALotOfRandomLettersAndNumersALotOfRandomLettersAndNumersALotOfRa
ndomLettersAndNumersALotOfRandomLettersAndNumersALotOfRandomLett
-----END PRIVATE KEY-----

$ cat cert.pem
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
ALotOfRandomLettersAndNumersALotOfRandomLettersAndNumersALotOfRa
ndomLettersAndNumersALotOfRandomLettersAndNumersALotOfRandomLett
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

Server code

I'm using Astra code as the base.

Astrrra repository

Fork

I needed to change few things, fix bugs, and add debug logging. So I made my fork.

ESP8266GeminiServer

Download it and put in your ~/Arduino/ projects directory.

Update config.h

Open config.h and put WiFi creditentials and content of RSA keys accordingly.

Flash

Now just compile and flash the main code.

Server data (SPIFF)

All the files lives at data/gemini/ subdirectory (where you keep the code). There is a sample index.gmi just to test if everything works.

My ESP8266 got only 1MB of FLASH. I can use half of that for a files system. In terms of Gemini capsules thats a lot!

Flash

Add your capsule files to data/gemini/
Set Flash size -> 1MB (FS:512KB).
Use the tools -> ESP8266 LittleFS Data Upload to upload /data/ to the FLASH.

Networking

I'm using proxy-manager for all my domains. On my router I forwarded port 1965 to the IP of ESP8266.

Now when I put the URL in gemini browser It got SSL resolved but got data from the microcontroller.

For testing I'm using second forward 1966 to get two servers working at once.

Go live!

Now you can restart (replug USB) the microcontroller and open serial monitor to see what is happening.

It is also very usefull to get the IP of the board.

Open the (gemini) browser and put your domain in. If everything works fine you shoudl see the content of your new capsule!

My ESP server

This whole article is also shared on the dedicated gemini capsule. It's just a proof-of-concept so do not expect anything new there.

It is a good test of real speed of this small computer.

gemini://floppy.p1x.in:8266

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