tinyweb

A lightweight HTTP web server written in Perl for testing firewalls, routing, loadbalancers, and network connectivity.

Description

tinyweb creates simple HTTP services on one or more ports. When accessed, it returns a plain text response indicating the hostname and port that was reached. This makes it ideal for:

• Testing firewall rules
• Verifying routing configurations
• Testing load balancers
• Network connectivity diagnostics
• Port accessibility verification

Requirements

• Perl with IO::Socket::INET module

Usage

tinyweb <start|stop|status|catlog> {port1,port2,...}

Commands

Start the service

# Start on default port (8080)
tinyweb start

# Start on a single custom port
tinyweb start 8000

# Start on multiple ports
tinyweb start 8000,8001,8020

Stop all services

tinyweb stop

This will terminate all running tinyweb processes.

Check status

tinyweb status

Lists all currently running tinyweb processes.

View logs

tinyweb catlog

Displays the log file contents.

How It Works

When a client connects to any of the listening ports, tinyweb responds with:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/plain

Success! You have reached: <hostname>:<port>

Logging

• Root user: Logs are written to /var/log/tinyweb.log
• Regular user: Logs are written to ~/tinyweb.log

Log entries include timestamps and connection information (port and connecting hostname).

Examples

Start a web service on port 8080 and test it:

# Start the service
tinyweb start 8080

# Test with curl
curl http://localhost:8080
# Output: Success! You have reached: yourhostname:8080

# Check the status
tinyweb status

# View the logs
tinyweb catlog

# Stop the service
tinyweb stop

Start multiple services for load balancer testing:

# Start services on three different ports
tinyweb start 8080,8081,8082

# Each port will respond with its own port number
curl http://localhost:8080  # Success! You have reached: yourhostname:8080
curl http://localhost:8081  # Success! You have reached: yourhostname:8081
curl http://localhost:8082  # Success! You have reached: yourhostname:8082

Author

Written by pal.ekran@nhn.no (November 2023)