NASMServer

An HTTP/1.0 server written in NetWide Assembler, by Douxx.
Read the blog article!

Caution

Educational project: This server likely has more security flaws than there are stars in the universe. It is not recommended for production use. Use it to learn, experiment, or have fun.

How it started

I started learning NASM on a Monday afternoon, because I was bored in my NoSQL class. After a few self-made exercises (parsing args, string processing, etc.), I built a small HTTP client tool, imagine curl, but without the cool stuff. Then during my blockchain class, I started developing this server. The source grew from there.

Usage (from a release)

Each release ships prebuilt bundles for different architectures. The bundles contain everything you need to run NASMServer. This includes the entry script nasmserver, an example configuration file env.example, and a default web directory www/.

# 1. Download and extract the release files
wget https://github.com/douxxtech/nasmserver/releases/latest/download/nasmserver-linux-x64.zip
unzip nasmserver-linux-x64.zip -d nasmserver

# 2. Go in the extracted directory
cd nasmserver

# 3. Read the provided instructions.txt
cat instructions.txt

# 4. Copy your .env (optional, see Configuration)
cp env.example .env

# 5. Run it (defaults to port 8080, document root: ./www)
./nasmserver

# Or pass a custom config file as -e
./nasmserver -e /path/to/config.env

# See all the supported flags
./nasmserver -h

Ports below 1024 (including the default port 8080) require root or CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE. Either run with sudo, or set PORT to something above 1024 in your .env.

Install (from a release)

Each bundle comes with an install script, that installs NASMServer on your operating system. It can also be used to update the current installation without overriding configs.

# once in the extracted bundle (see previous section)
./install

Build from source

Requirements: nasm binutils patchelf

# to only build the x86_64 NASMServer binary
bash buildasm.sh program.asm
# output binary will be 'program'


# to build a specific bundle
bash .github/scripts/build-bindle.sh <x64|aarch64>
# this script outputs bundle-<arch>/ and nasmserver-linux-<arch>.zip

The entry file is program.asm. Macros and utilities live in macros/, labels in labels/.

Configuration

Copy env.example to .env and edit as needed. All keys are optional, and defaults are used if a key is missing or the file is not found.

Key	Default	Description
PORT	8080	Port to listen on
DOCUMENT_ROOT	.	Document root directory, no trailing slash
INDEX_FILE	index.html	File served when a directory is requested
MAX_REQUESTS	20	Max simultaneous connections (1–255)
SERVER_NAME	NASMServer/ver	Value for the Server: response header
ERRORDOC_400	(empty)	Error page path, relative to DOCUMENT_ROOT, must start with /
ERRORDOC_403	(empty)	Same, for 403
ERRORDOC_404	(empty)	Same, for 404
ERRORDOC_405	(empty)	Same, for 405

If an ERRORDOC_* is left empty, the server sends headers only with no body for that error. Inexistent errordoc files produce a startup warning but are not fatal.

Notes

• HTTP/1.0 only, no TLS (HTTPS can be handled upstream via a reverse proxy or Cloudflare tunnel)
• No CRLF support in .env files, so use LF line endings
• Bugs, errors, or issues? Open an issue

See LICENSE for usage terms.