orion

orion is now on Codeberg. This repository is unmaintained but will be kept here for some time. Please go to Codeberg for the current repository.

orion is a minimalistic gemini server written in go with the goal of being easy-to-use and to have minimal requirements as well as a small footprint.

Requirements: go >= 1.14

The project is stable. Issues, Feedback and Pull-Requests are still welcome 😃

Usage

Running orion is as simple as

./orion -config orion.conf

orion requires three things to work properly

• A valid configuration file (see orion.conf)
• A TLS certificate and key file (see below)
• Your awesome gemini content (See ContentDir in the orion.conf)

A example TLS certificate and key file is required. See the Create self-signed certificate section below.

The recommended way of running orion is as a podman container (See below).

Pre-build binaries

Pre-build binaries for Linux are available on the releases page.

Run a podman/docker container

Please use the containers from [codeberg.org/grisu48/orion](https://codeberg.org/grisu48/orion/packages]. GitHub and DockerHub are no longer maintained.

Assuming you have your configuration files in /srv/orion/conf and your data directory in /srv/orion/data:

docker run -d --name orion -v /srv/orion/conf:/conf -v /srv/orion/data:/data -p 1965:1965 codeberg.org/grisu48/orion
podman run -d --name orion -v /srv/orion/conf:/conf -v /srv/orion/data:/data -p 1965:1965 --memory 128M codeberg.org/grisu48/orion

Make sure that the configuration file /srv/orion/conf/orion.conf exists and is configured to your needs. Checkout the example orion.conf in this directory.

Also ensure that the certificate and key files are located in /srv/orion/conf/ and configured properly in your orion.conf. See the section create self-signed certificate for more information.

orion can also be configured via environmental variables, which should be particularly useful for containerized applications.

Build and run the binary

Compile the orion binary

make               # Default build
make static        # Build static binary

Then edit the configuration file orion.conf to your wishes and launch the program

./orion -config orion.conf

Create self-signed certificates

Disclaimer: A self-signed certificate allows for a whole class of attack scenarios e.g. man-in-the-middle attacks without additional safety guards like TOFU. Be aware that a self-signed certificate does not give you the same protection as a signed certificate by a trusted CA.

That being said, in the gemini universe self-signed certificated are kind of the common use case.

To create self-signed certificates for quick testing, you can use the following make recipe:

make cert

Alternatively you can also run the openssl commands directly:

openssl genrsa -out orion.key 2048
openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 3650 -key orion.key -out orion.crt

Build podman/docker container

orion is able to launch from a podman/docker container, however you need to first build the container yourself.

make podman         # Build container for podman
make docker         # Build container for docker

The container expects the /conf volume to contain your configuration file orion.conf and suggests to place your date into the /data volume. If you want to use the later depends on your configuration in orion.conf.

After building and configuration, this is how you can run your container:

# Replace `podman` with `docker` for a docker container
podman run --rm -ti --name orion -v /srv/orion/conf:/conf -v /srv/orion/data/:/data -p 1965 codeberg.org/grisu48/orion

It's recommended to place your certificates in the /conf direcory and use the following configuration

Certfile = /conf/orion.crt
Keyfile = /conf/orion.key

Note: Use the chroot setting in containers for additional security.

See also the supported environmental variables for additional configuration possibilities.

Credits

• This project was inspired by the titan2 minimalistic Gemini server written by lostleonardo.