Boa is an unmaintained since 2005
open-source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
small-footprint
web server
A web server is computer software and underlying Computer hardware, hardware that accepts requests via Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, co ...
that is suitable for embedded applications. Originally written by
Paul Phillips, it was previously maintained by Larry Doolittle and Jon Nelson.
Slashdot
''Slashdot'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''/.'') is a social news website that originally billed itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". It features news stories on science, technology, and politics that are submitted and evaluated by site ...
and
Fotolog
Fotolog.com (originally Fotolog.net) was a social network for sharing primarily photos. The site claimed that its vision was to build a "good" social network which prioritizes the well-being of users. The site only allowed all members of the comm ...
use Boa to serve images.
As of its last release, Boa has the following limitations:
* No access control features (HTTP
Basic access authentication
In the context of an HTTP transaction, basic access authentication is a method for an HTTP user agent (e.g. a web browser) to provide a user name and password when making a request. In basic HTTP authentication, a request contains a header field ...
, etc.)
* No
chroot
chroot is a shell (computer), shell command (computing), command and a system call on Unix and Unix-like operating systems that changes the apparent root directory for the current running process and its Child process, children. A program that i ...
option (planned)
* No
Server Side Includes
Server Side Includes (SSI) is a simple interpreted server-side scripting language used almost exclusively for the World Wide Web. It is most useful for including the contents of one or more files into a web page on a web server (see below), using ...
(deemed incompatible with server performance goals)
* No SSL support although there are some patches against 0.94.13 that introduce SSL support
As of 2022 Boa is still used in many embedded applications, and its known vulnerabilities have been actively exploited.
See also
*
Comparison of web servers
Web server software allows computers to act as web servers. The first web servers supported only static files, such as HTML (and images), but now they commonly allow embedding of server side applications.
Some web application frameworks include s ...
References
External links
*
Source code on GitHubAn Overview of the Boa Web ServerBoa: an Embedded Web ServerUser Interface Design using CGI Programming and Boa Web Server on M5249C3 BoardMailing List
Free web server software
{{network-software-stub