feuille

feuille is a fast, dead-simple socket-based pastebin that allows a user to send text, logs or code to your server. It focuses on speed, code quality, and security.

Table of Contents

1. Usage
2. Installation
   • Dependencies
   • Build
   • Configuration
3. Help
   • How do I make feuille run at startup?
   • How do I remove expired pastes after some time?
   • How can I send pastes directly from my website (instead of using netcat)?
4. Authors
5. License
6. Acknowledgments

Usage

You'll need either nc or nmap's ncat.

The former is probably already available on your system, but lacks some features, which will make you wait for the timeout before getting a link to the paste (usually 4 seconds).

The latter will have to be installed manually but is more featureful and will get a link instantly once everything is sent. It works the exact same way as nc.

Choose your weapon wisely.

Assuming you're using my personal pastebin instance, heimdall.pm, you can upload text, code or logs like this:

// sending text
$ echo Hello, World! | nc heimdall.pm 9999
https://bin.heimdall.pm/abcd

// sending files
$ cat feuille.c | nc heimdall.pm 9999
https://bin.heimdall.pm/efgh

This truly is the joy of Unix pipes.

Once you received the link to your paste, you can send it to someone, browse it or curl it, like this:

$ curl https://bin.heimdall.pm/abcd
Hello, World!

$ curl https://bin.heimdall.pm/efgh
/*
 * feuille.c
 *  Main source file.
...

If you want syntax highlighting on your pastes, you can use bat, a cat clone with syntax highlighting features. Simply curl your paste and pipe it to bat with the language used.

$ curl https://bin.heimdall.pm/efgh | bat -l c
/*
 * feuille.c
 *  Main source file.
...

Want to push the concept further? You can send encrypted files, too! You'll need gpg for this. -c means encryption using a password, -ao tmp.pgp means ASCII output to file tmp.pgp.

$ cat secret.txt | gpg -cao tmp.pgp
$ cat tmp.pgp | nc heimdall.pm 9999
https://bin.heimdall.pm/ijkl

You can then retrieve it and decrypt it using curl and gpg again, like this:

$ curl https://bin.heimdall.pm/ijkl | gpg -d

(Obviously, you'll have to type the right password.)

But, all those commands are really cumbersome, aren't they?
Guess what? We made aliases!

Put those into your ~/.{ba,z,k}shrc:

alias pst="nc heimdall.pm 9999"
alias spst="gpg -cao /tmp/paste.pgp && cat /tmp/paste.pgp | nc heimdall.pm 9999 && rm /tmp/paste.pgp"

Now, you can use feuille like this:

// plain
$ echo Hello, World! | pst
https://bin.heimdall.pm/mnop

// encrypted
$ echo da sup3r sekr1t | spst
https://bin.heimdall.pm/qrst

That sould be it. Have fun!

Description

• Focuses on speed,

  • Multi-threaded (using fork)
  • Only does what it needs to do

• code quality,

  • Readable, documented code
  • With future contributors / maintainers in mind

• and security

  • chroots in the output folder
  • Drops root privileges once they're no longer needed
  • Uses OS-specific security measures (like OpenBSD's pledge)

• Plenty of auxiliary files (see cgi/, cron/ and service/)

  • A CGI script that lets the user send pastes directly from your website
  • A sample HTML form for your CGI script
  • A cron job that deletes expired pastes
  • A SystemD service file
  • An OpenRC service file

• Lots of options (see configuration)

• Works on nearly all POSIX-compliant OSes

• Can be run in the background and as a service

• IPv6-enabled

Installation

Dependencies

You'll need a working POSIX-compliant system such as Linux, OpenBSD or FreeBSD, a C99 compiler (GCC, Clang...) and a POSIX-Make implementation.

You'll probably want an HTTP / Gopher / Gemini / ... server to serve the pastes on the web, such as OpenBSD's httpd or Apache. Just make your server serve the folder feuille's using, there are plenty of tutorials on the web.

If you wish to make modifications to the manpage, you'll need pandoc to convert the markdown file into a man-compatible format.

Build

feuille needs to be built from source.

To do so, you'll first need to clone the repository.

$ git clone https://basedwa.re/tmtt/feuille
$ cd feuille

Then, simply run:

$ make
$ sudo make install

If you wish to make a debug build, you can set DEBUG to whatever comes to your mind.

You can also set CC to the compiler of your liking, like clang or pcc.

$ make DEBUG=yes CC=clang

In order to compile CGI script(s), run:

$ make cgi

ADDR and PORT can be set to the address and port on which feuille listens, respectively.

Configuration

For a complete list of options and examples, please see the manpage, either on your computer by doing man feuille or on the online wiki.

Help

• How do I make feuille run at startup?
• How do I remove expired pastes after some time?
• How can I send pastes directly from my website (instead of using netcat)?

How do I make feuille run at startup?

We made some service files for that.

SystemD

Tweak service/systemd to your liking and copy it to /etc/systemd/system/feuille.service.

Then, do (as root):

# systemctl daemon-reload
# systemctl enable feuille
# systemctl start feuille

OpenRC

Copy service/openrc into /etc/rc.d/feuille.

Then, do (as root):

# rcctl enable feuille
# rcctl set feuille flags -U https://my.paste.bin
# rcctl start feuille

Tweak the flags to your liking.

How do I remove expired pastes after some time?

You can put that in your crontab (by doing sudo crontab -e). It will delete all files in /var/www/feuille that are at least 7 days old.

Don't forget to change the folder to the one feuille's using and eventually +7 to the maximum file age you'd like to use.

0 0 * * * find /var/www/feuille -type f -mtime +7 -exec rm {} +

See cron/purge.cron if you'd like to download the cron job.

How can I send pastes directly from my website (instead of using netcat)?

We made a CGI script for that. First, you need to build it:

$ make cgi

ADDR and PORT can be set to the address and port on which feuille listens, respectively.

Once it's done, you can put ./cgi/feuille.cgi in your website's cgi-bin folder (usually somewhere like /var/www/my.paste.bin/cgi-bin) and configure your web server to execute CGI scripts.

You can then create an HTML form that will send a POST request to the CGI script. The form must have enctype="text/plain" and must contain only one input or textarea. See cgi/form.html for a sample form.

Authors

Tom MTT. tom@heimdall.pm

License

Copyright © 2022 Tom MTT. tom@heimdall.pm
This program is free software, licensed under the 3-Clause BSD License. See LICENSE for more information.

Acknowledgments

Heavily inspired by fiche.

I entirely "rewrote" fiche from scratch because I wasn't happy with some of its features and its overall code quality.