Website on Niall Donaghy

OpenBSD httpd Basic Setup With Auto Index and Cgi

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:43:38 +0100

Setting up httpd webserver, and you want:

some static html please
display a directory listing autoindex style
try a dumb CGI script because why not?

This is basic tyre-kicking; please read my other posts on making a more complete httpd (and system, for that matter) configuration.

create a basic /etc/httpd.conf

types { include "/usr/share/misc/mime.types" }

server "default" {
        listen on * port 80
        root "/htdocs"

        location "/cgi-bin/*" {
                root "/"
                fastcgi socket "/run/slowcgi.sock"
        }
}

enable slow cgi on boot, start it

rcctl enable slowcgi
rcctl start slowcgi

create our test files

static

echo "Hello from OpenBSD httpd." | tee /var/www/htdocs/index.html

cgi

nano /var/www/cgi-bin/ip.cgi, and paste in:

#!/bin/sh
echo "Content-Type: text/plain"
echo ""
echo "Hello from OpenBSD httpd."
echo "Your IP is ${REMOTE_ADDR:-unknown}."

Note: This is for example only; I don’t endorse serving up #!/bin/sh via your webserver. :)

OpenBSD httpd TLS Certificate

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 23:24:03 +0100

Migrating OpenBSD httpd from HTTP to HTTPS

LetsEncrypt offer free TLS certs and have a nice ACME clients to handle auto-renewal. Here’s how to implement on OpenBSD, assuming you have your httpd server up and running on port 80 already.

For example you might have some basic /etc/httpd:

types { include "/usr/share/misc/mime.types" }

server "ndonaghy.com" { 
	listen on * port 80 
	root "/htdocs" 
	location "/stuff/*" { 
		directory { 
			auto index
		} 
	} 
}

Step 1: Add acme-challenge location

Add this location directive to /etc/httpd.conf:

Hugo

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:23:04 +0100

Hugo: getting started

Install

There are multiple ways to obtain and install - eg: distro package manager, github binary, compile source. Check the docs and choose what works best for you.

I am going with a recent binary:

cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/releases/download/v0.159.2/hugo_extended_0.159.2_linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar -xzf hugo_extended_0.159.2_linux-amd64.tar.gz
sudo mv hugo /usr/local/bin/
hugo version

Create site

Here I am working in my git repo which has an existing README.md file, so use –force to create despite the directory not being empty: