Gemini-PHP

Gemini-PHP is a Gemini server written in PHP by @neil@glasgow.social.

It's designed more for teaching than practical use. That's said - it's very simple to get up and running and we're hosting this page on it - it seems to be performing well.

If you have any questions or want to get in touch, you can join our community on Matrix at #gemini-php:glasgow.social

How to install

Download via git

git clone https://coding.openguide.co.uk/git/gemini-php/

Enter the project directory and create a certificate for your server (a self signed certificate is fine, in fact it's encouraged!)

cd gemini-php
openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout key.pem -out cert.pem -days 365

Combine your private key with the certificate and put in the certs directory

cp cert.pem certs/combined.pem
cat key.pem >> certs/combined.pem

Create a config file from the sample

cp config.php.sample config.php

Then edit it with the location of your new certificate - most other options are optional

Start your server with

php server.php

You should be able to visit your new server in any Gemini client (remember to open your firewall if needed - post 1965)

Our favourite Gemini client so far is Lagrange

Using Gemini-PHP

The basic index file is located in hosts/default/index.gemini - edit this to get started

Gemini-PHP supports multiple virtual hosts, just create a directory with the name of the domain you expect to receive requests for, i.e.

mkdir hosts/glasgow.social
mkdir hosts/projects.glasgow.social

Running as a service

To set up the server as a service, create the following file in /etc/systemd/system/gemini-php.service

[Unit]
Description=Gemini-PHP Service

[Service]
User=gemini
Type=simple
TimeoutSec=0
WorkingDirectory=/home/gemini/gemini-php/
PIDFile=/var/run/gemini-php.pid
ExecStart=/usr/bin/php -f /home/gemini/gemini-php/server.php
KillMode=process

Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=42s

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Note, customise the above to the user you are running gemini-php as (we recommend creating a new user account for this to keep it relatively isolated) as well as the path to the script.

Enable the script with systemctl

sudo systemctl enable gemini-php
sudo systemctl start gemini-php
systemctl status gemini-php

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