<div class='fossil-doc' data-title="How To Configure A Fossil Server">
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<h2>No Server Required</h2>
<p>Fossil does not require a central server, but <a
href="whyuseaserver.wiki">a server can be useful</a>.</p>
<p>A Fossil server does not require much memory, CPU, or disk space
and can run comfortably on a generic $5/month virtual host
or on a small device like a RaspberryPI, or it can co-exist
on a host running other services without getting in the way.
<p>This article is a quick-reference guide for setting up your own
Fossil server, with links to more detailed instructions specific to
particular systems, should you want extra help.</p>
<h2 id="methods">Methods</h2>
<p>There are basically four ways to set up a Fossil server:</p>
<ol>
<li><a id="cgi" href="any/cgi.md">CGI</a>
<li>Socket listener
<li><a id="standalone" href="any/none.md">Stand-alone HTTP server</a>
<li><a id="scgi" href="any/scgi.md">SCGI</a>
</ol>
<p>All of these methods can serve either a single repository or a
directory containing repositories named "<tt>*.fossil</tt>".</p>
<p>You are not restricted to using a single method. The same Fossil
repository can be served using two or more of the above techniques at
the same time. These methods use clean, well-defined, standard
interfaces (CGI, SCGI, and HTTP) which allow you to easily migrate from
one method to another to accommodate changes in hosting providers or
administrator preferences.</p>
<h3>CGI</h3>
<p>Most ordinary web servers can <a href="any/cgi.md">run Fossil as a
CGI script</a>. This method is known to work with Apache,
<tt>lighttpd</tt>, and <a
href="any/althttpd.md"><tt>althttpd</tt></a>. The Fossil server
administrator places a <a href="/help?cmd=cgi">short CGI script</a> in
the web server's document hierarchy, and when a client requests the URL
that corresponds to that script, the script runs Fossil to generate the
response.</p>
<p>CGI is a good choice for merging Fossil into an existing web site,
particularly on hosts that have CGI set up for you already and won't let
you modify the web server configuration further. The Fossil <a
href="../selfhost.wiki">self-hosting repositories</a> are implemented
with CGI underneath <tt>althttpd</tt>.</p>
<h3>Socket Listener</h3>
<p>Only slightly more complicated is the socket listener method.
Instead of letting Fossil run in the background continuously to handle
HTTP requests from clients, you configure a socket listener daemon to
run a <a href="/help?cmd=http"><tt>fossil http</tt></a> command on each
HTTP hit. That Fossil instance handles only that one hit and then shuts
back down, letting the socket listener go back to waiting for the next
hit. This scheme is known to work with <a id="inetd"
href="any/inetd.md"><tt>inetd</tt></a>, <a id="xinetd"
href="any/xinetd.md"><tt>xinetd</tt></a>, <a id="stunnel"
href="any/stunnel.md"><tt>stunnel</tt></a>, <a
href="macos/service.md"><tt>launchd</tt></a>, and <a
href="debian/service.md"><tt>systemd</tt></a>.</p>
<h3>Stand-alone HTTP Server</h3>
<p>This is the <a href="any/none.md">easiest method</a>.
A stand-alone server uses the <a
href="/help?cmd=server"><tt>fossil server</tt></a> command to run a
process that listens for incoming HTTP requests on a socket and then
dispatches a copy of itself to deal with each incoming request. You can
expose Fossil directly to the clients in this way or you can interpose a
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_proxy">reverse proxy</a>
layer between the clients and Fossil.</p>
<h3>SCGI</h3>
<p>The Fossil standalone server can also run <a href="any/scgi.md">in
SCGI mode</a> — <a href="/help/server"><tt>fossil server --scgi</tt></a>
— instead of <a href="any/none.md">HTTP mode</a>, which allows it to
respond to requests from web servers <a href="debian/nginx.md">such as
nginx</a> that don't support CGI. SCGI is a simpler protocol to proxy
than HTTP, since the HTTP doesn't have to be re-interpreted in terms of
the proxy's existing HTTP implementation, but it's more complex to set
up because you also have to set up an SCGI-to-HTTP proxy for it. It is
worth taking on this difficulty only when you need to integrate Fossil
into an existing web site already being served by an SCGI-capable web
server.</p>
<h2 id="matrix">Setup Tutorials</h2>
<p>We've broken the configuration for each method out into a series of
sub-articles. Some of these are generic, while others depend on
particular operating systems or front-end software:</p>
<div id="tutpick" class="show"></div>
<table style="margin-left: 6em;">
<tr>
<th class="host">⇩ OS / Method ⇨</th>
<th class="fep">direct</th>
<th class="fep">inetd</th>
<th class="fep">stunnel</th>
<th class="fep">CGI</th>
<th class="fep">SCGI</th>
<th class="fep">althttpd</th>
<th class="fep">proxy</th>
<th class="fep">service</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th class="host">Any</th>
<td class="doc"><a href="any/none.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc"><a href="any/inetd.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc"><a href="any/stunnel.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc"><a href="any/cgi.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc"><a href="any/scgi.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc"><a href="any/althttpd.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc">❌</td>
<td class="doc">❌</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th class="host">Debian/Ubuntu</th>
<td class="doc"><a href="any/none.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc"><a href="any/inetd.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc"><a href="any/stunnel.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc"><a href="any/cgi.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc"><a href="any/scgi.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc"><a href="any/althttpd.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc"><a href="debian/nginx.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc"><a href="debian/service.md">✅</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th class="host">macOS</th>
<td class="doc"><a href="any/none.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc">❌</td>
<td class="doc"><a href="any/stunnel.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc"><a href="any/cgi.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc"><a href="any/scgi.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc"><a href="any/althttpd.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc">❌</td>
<td class="doc"><a href="macos/service.md">✅</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th class="host">Windows</th>
<td class="doc"><a href="windows/none.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc">❌</td>
<td class="doc"><a href="windows/stunnel.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc"><a href="windows/cgi.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc">❌</td>
<td class="doc">❌</td>
<td class="doc"><a href="windows/iis.md">✅</a></td>
<td class="doc"><a href="windows/service.md">✅</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>Where there is a check mark in the "<b>Any</b>" row, the method for that is
generic enough that it works across OSes that Fossil is known to work
on. The check marks below that usually just link to this generic
documentation.</p>
<p>The method in the "<b>proxy</b>" column is for the platform's default
web server configured as a <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_proxy">reverse proxy</a> for
Fossil's built-in HTTP server: <a href="debian/nginx.md">nginx</a>, <a
href="windows/iis.md">IIS</a>, Apache, etc.</p>
<p>We welcome <a href="../contribute.wiki">contributions</a> to fill gaps
(<font size="-2">❌</font>) in the table above.</p>
</noscript>
<h2 id="more">Further Details</h2>
<ul>
<li><a id="chroot" href="../chroot.md" >The Server Chroot Jail</a>
<li><a id="loadmgmt" href="../loadmgmt.md" >Managing Server Load</a>
<li><a id="tls" href="../ssl.wiki" >Securing a Repository with TLS</a>
<li><a id="ext" href="../serverext.wiki">CGI Server Extensions</a>
<li><a id="about" href="../aboutcgi.wiki" >How CGI Works In Fossil</a>
<li><a id="sync" href="../sync.wiki" >The Fossil Sync Protocol</a>
</ul>
</div>