notesock

Terminal pastebin server utilizing unix sockets, with exact expiry per paste to alleviate filesystem clutter.

It is meant to be used with netcat:

$ echo "Hello world" | ncat notesock.example.org 1234
https://notesock.example.org/abc123 | expires in 5m

This saves the paste do /configured/dir/abc123/index.txt which makes sure that browsers accessing the URL will interpret the file as .txt only, as only UTF-8 encoded data is accepted by the server.

To receive the paste:

$ curl https://notesock.example.org/abc123
Hello world

The files are stored unencrypted, thus, the user is made responsible to make their information private, e.g. by using gpg:

$ echo "hehe" > mysecret.file
$ gpg -cao mysecret.file.gpg mysecret.file
$ ncat notesock.example.org 1234 < mysecret.file.gpg  
https://notesock.example.org/def456 ...

$ curl https://notesock.example.org/def456 | gpg -d
hehe

Getting started:

Important

Because this server listens on an unix socket, a reverse proxy is necessary if it is supposed to be reachable from the interwebz. (Benefits of this are advanced rate-limiting features of the reverse proxy, with a lean-and-mean backend server that only manages validation, id generation and saving of the pastes.)

Packages

• Arch User Repository: notesock

Build

$ git clone https://github.com/Sir-Photch/notesock.git && cd notesock
$ cargo build --release
$ target/release/notesock -h

Inspect possible arguments and choose sensible values for your setup.

Reverse proxy

The same webserver that you would need for serving the pastes via http can be used for this. You just need to forward a network port of your choice to the unix socket created by notesock.

Tip

For nginx, you can refer to the example configuration.

systemd

This pastebin implementation does not rely on dropping privileges for fool-proofing, rather, usage via a systemd unit is preferred.

Tip

If you like to use systemd, you can refer to the example unit.

Useful terminal shenanigans

Some commands that you can alias in your shell's resource file to save you some time.

fish on wayland

Fits right into your ~/.config/fish/config.fish!

Workflow: copy something on your desktop (Ctrl+C, or rightclick -> copy), execute this pipe (preferably with an alias) and observe Ctrl+V now inserting the link to the paste!

$ wl-paste | string trim | ncat notesock.example.org 1234 | tee /dev/tty | string split -f1 '|' | string trim | wl-copy

With encryption:

$ ncat notesock.example.org 1234 <(wl-paste | gpg -ca | psub) | tee /dev/tty | string split -f1 '|' | string trim | wl-copy