Awesome

hydepark

A discussion forum application for Gemini.

Preparing for run

Compilation

As a prerequisite, the following dependencies must be installed:

• libsqlite3-dev
• libssl-dev

Next, you'll need Rust to compile Hydepark. Once you have it, run:

cargo build --release

Server SSL certificate

Gemini protocol mandates the use of TLS encryption, therefore as a prerequisite step you must have a valid SSL certificate. You can generate your own self-signed server certificate, or obtain one from a CA like Let's Encrypt.

Here's one example for generating self-signed SSL certificate using OpenSSL (replace example.com with your own domain name):

openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout example.com.key \
  -nodes -x509 -out example.com.crt -subj "/CN=example.com"

Hydepark works with .pfx certificate container. To create one, run:

openssl pkcs12 -export -out cert.pfx \
  -inkey example.com.key -in example.com.crt

Running

RUST_LOG=hydepark=trace ./target/release/hydepark

See env_logger documentation on controlling log verbosity.

Configuration

The service can be configured using command line arguments. For the list of available options, run: hydepark -h.

Storage

Hydepark uses external storage for storing all the information on users, forum topics, etc. By default, in-memory SQLite is used as a storage. To use persistent storage, configure one of the available storage types:

Example of using persistent SQLite database file:

RUST_LOG=hydepark=trace ./target/debug/hydepark --db-conn=sqlite://test.db

Client authentication

Hydepark uses client side SSL certificates for user authentication. Clients can browse existing topics and messages anonymously, but once they wish to create a new topic or write a new message they will be asked to "register" by providing a username. The username will be linked with the SSL certificate currently used.

Updating client certificate

When client certificate is about to be expired, a warning link will be shown. Click on the link, and follow the instructions for attaching a new certificate to your account. To update the certificate explicitly, navigate to: gemini://<hostname>/update-cert-req.