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article-20h-geomyidae.mw (6306B)
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1 .SH 20h
2 20h Presents: Geomyidae
3 .2C 14v
4 .
5 .PP
6 This project existed since a while, and kept improving.
7 In this interview with 20h, he shows us what Geomyidae's got under the hood.
8 .
9 .QP
10 What is Geomyidae?
11 .
12 .PP
13 Geomyidae is a Unix/Linux daemon/service serving the gopher protocol.
14 .
15 .QP
16 So what is gopher?
17 .
18 .PP
19 Gopher here is an internet protocol, which was first developed at the University of Minnesota.
20 After its short success, it declined, but is now striving again to be used for its simplicity and hierarchy.
21 For better visual display of your gopher experience, use something like links, lynx or sacc.
22 Those are gopher clients.
23 .
24 .QP
25 How does Geomyidae help with getting started with gopher?
26 .
27 .PP
28 The installation of Geomyidae is very simple.
29 You can setup your Geomyidae right away:
30 .
31 .1C
32 .
33 .DS
34 git clone git://bitreich.org/geomyidae
35 cd geomyidae
36 make
37 ./geomyidae -b $(pwd) -p 7070 &
38 curl -s gopher://localhost:7070
39 .DE
40 .
41 .2C 94v
42 .
43 .PP
44 Yes, curl supports gopher!
45 And it supports gopher and TLS too!
46 .
47 .QP
48 Are there many alternatives among gopher daemons?
49 .
50 .PP
51 Yes, there are many.
52 Some are there due to historical reasons, others have gone out of shape over time.
53 One of the most popular alternatives is pygopherd.
54 .
55 .QP
56 How does Geomyidae compares to other implementations?
57 .
58 .PP
59 Geomyidae offers a unique simple way of expressing gopher content.
60 See the manpage or the examples in the source for how .gph files are formatted.
61 And it does just what you want it to do.
62 No strange abstraction files like in the original gopher daemons are the default way.
63 In the newest release of Geomyidae compatibility scripts were added.
64 But those are to preserve the unique history of gopher.
65 .
66 .QP
67 Did Geomyidae have significant evolutions since the beginning?
68 .
69 .PP
70 Yes.
71 Originally Geomyidae was named gopherd for Plan 9.
72 It then was ported over to Linux.
73 On Linux it was renamed to Geomyidae.
74 During that development much has happened: There were significant speedups (due to the patches and work of other people!), features were added especially in new dynamic content handling.
75 You can easily see all features in the documentation and especially the simple manpage.
76 .
77 .QP
78 Does Geomyidae work with all gopher clients?
79 .
80 .PP
81 Yes.
82 Geomyidae supports the original protocol from the beginning, up to modern gopher with TLS.
83 For the intermediary gopher+ protocol there is a compatibility layer.
84 .
85 .QP
86 Has NSA inserted a backdoor onto Geomyidae?
87 .
88 .PP
89 I am not allowed to tell you.
90 .
91 .QP
92 How does gopher help with privacy?
93 .
94 .PP
95 The gopher protocol has the unique property that all data you send over the line can be easily controlled and seen.
96 This is different to HTTP, where headers, HTML and Javascript got so complex, it is uncontrollable.
97 See the gopher onion project
98 .FS
99 gopher://bitreich.org/1/onion
100 .FE
101 for how to combine this with tor for total privacy and anonymity.
102 .
103 .QP
104 Are there TLS support on some gopher clients already?
105 .
106 .PP
107 There is support in curl, mpv/ffmpeg, sacc and more.
108 It is very easy to add TLS support to any client.
109 You simply connect via TLS on the gopher TCP port (default: 70) and if it works,
110 keep that connection open.
111 .
112 .QP
113 Are there been any evolution of the gopher protocol itself since the beginning of Geomyidae?
114 .
115 .PP
116 The technology used is simple.
117 Gopher does not allow requests, which begin with the first bytes of a TLS request.
118 So any proper and old gopher daemon will simply refuse the connection.
119 Then the client is free to reconnect without TLS based on its security configuration.
120 Any ISDN line will handle such probing requests for TLS easily.
121 .
122 .QP
123 Did Geomyidae have to adapt itself to the gopher protocol? Did it make gopher change?
124 .
125 .PP
126 Geomyidae changed the part of gophespace it was able to reach.
127 Many servers run on Geomyidae.
128 There is software written just for Geomyidae and its gph format.
129 The TLS extension of the protocol came from Bitreich / Geomyidae.
130 We also set the standard to simply use UTF-8 as default representation in gopher menus and so bring it into the 21st century.
131 I can conclude: Yes, Geomyidae changed and will change gopher.
132 .
133 .QP
134 Have you seen Geomyidae ever used outside a hobby project?
135 .
136 .PP
137 Well, Bitreich is serious in changing the software world.
138 Most of gopherspace is »hobby projects«.
139 But then, most of gopherspace is made from heart blood and love, which makes it part of the life of the authors.
140 .
141 .QP
142 Is Geomyidae ready for non-hobby uses?
143 .
144 .PP
145 Geomyidae is ready for any use.
146 It is stable and optimized to scale better than the cloud.
147 .
148 .QP
149 Geomyidae uses ".gph" files.
150 .
151 .PP
152 Does it replace the gophermap standard?
153 Yes, in Geomyidae it does.
154 Gph is simpler and easier to adapt to, especially when you come from some markup world.
155 .
156 .QP
157 Does Geomyidae support dynamic pages?
158 .
159 .PP
160 Geomyidae supports two forms of dynamic pages: One which uses the gph markup and one, where the script/application outputs raw gopher output.
161 Additionally it supports in the latest release a form of REST, where paths are transformed into arguments to scripts.
162 There is also support for index.dcgi/index.cgi scripts to have better looking paths and URIs.
163 .
164 .QP
165 Is Geomyidae already packaged in some Linux/BSD distributions?
166 .
167 .PP
168 As far as I know it is packaged in gentoo, Archlinux (and more), all BSDs.
169 Since it is so simple to package: Just extract the tarball, run make and make install, the packages are easily made for any package manager.
170 .
171 .QP
172 What is planned for the next releases of Geomyidae?
173 .
174 .PP
175 As of now I have worked through my whole long-standing TODO list for Geomyidae.
176 New ideas will evolve from people sending in patches or through practical need.
177 Geomyidae follows the Bitreich manifesto
178 .FS
179 gopher://bitreich.org/0/documents/bitreich-manifesto.md
180 .FE
181 where a software can be done.
182 .
183 .QP
184 How to get involved? Getting help, discussing, bug hunting, code contribution, documentation...
185 .
186 .PP
187 If anyone wants to get involved, first download Geomyidae, run it, have fun using it, creating gopher content.
188 If you run into problems, have patches or suggestions, come on IRC
189 .FS
190 ircs://irc.bitreich.org/#bitreich-en
191 .FE
192 and discuss with us your problem.
193 For e-mail, send such requests to 20h@r-36.net.
194 All contact is in the manpage too.
195 .
196 .QP
197 Can I have an ice cream?
198 .
199 .PP
200 Yes, you will get one, once we meet again.