miniserve - a CLI tool to serve files and dirs over HTTP

For when you really just want to serve some files over HTTP right now!

miniserve is a small, self-contained cross-platform CLI tool that allows you to just grab the binary and serve some file(s) via HTTP. Sometimes this is just a more practical and quick way than doing things properly.

Screenshot

How to use

Serve a directory:

miniserve linux-distro-collection/

Serve a single file:

miniserve linux-distro.iso

Require username/password:

miniserve --auth joe:123 unreleased-linux-distros/

Require username/password as hash:

pw=$(echo -n "123" | sha256sum | cut -f 1 -d ' ')
miniserve --auth joe:sha256:$pw unreleased-linux-distros/

Generate random 6-hexdigit URL:

miniserve -i 192.168.0.1 --random-route /tmp
# Serving path /private/tmp at http://192.168.0.1/c789b6

Bind to multiple interfaces:

miniserve -i 192.168.0.1 -i 10.13.37.10 -i ::1 /tmp/myshare

Start with TLS:

miniserve --tls-cert my.cert --tls-key my.key /tmp/myshare

Upload a file using curl:

# in one terminal
miniserve -u .
# in another terminal
curl -F "path=@$FILE" http://localhost:8080/upload\?path\=/

(where $FILE is the path to the file. This uses miniserve's default port of 8080)

Features

• Easy to use
• Just works: Correct MIME types handling out of the box
• Single binary drop-in with no extra dependencies required
• Authentication support with username and password (and hashed password)
• Mega fast and highly parallel (thanks to Rust and Actix)
• Folder download (compressed on the fly as .tar.gz or .zip)
• File uploading
• Pretty themes (with light and dark theme support)
• Scan QR code for quick access
• Shell completions
• Sane and secure defaults
• TLS (for supported architectures)

Usage

miniserve 0.16.0

Sven-Hendrik Haase <svenstaro@gmail.com>, Boastful Squirrel <boastful.squirrel@gmail.com>

For when you really just want to serve some files over HTTP right now!

USAGE:
    miniserve [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] [--] [PATH]

ARGS:
    <PATH>
            Which path to serve

FLAGS:
    -D, --dirs-first
            List directories first

    -F, --hide-version-footer
            Hide version footer

    -g, --enable-tar-gz
            Enable gz-compressed tar archive generation

    -h, --help
            Print help information

    -H, --hidden
            Show hidden files

    -o, --overwrite-files
            Enable overriding existing files during file upload

    -P, --no-symlinks
            Do not follow symbolic links

    -q, --qrcode
            Enable QR code display

    -r, --enable-tar
            Enable uncompressed tar archive generation

        --random-route
            Generate a random 6-hexdigit route

    -u, --upload-files
            Enable file uploading

    -v, --verbose
            Be verbose, includes emitting access logs

    -V, --version
            Print version information

    -z, --enable-zip
            Enable zip archive generation

            WARNING: Zipping large directories can result in out-of-memory exception because zip
            generation is done in memory and cannot be sent on the fly

OPTIONS:
    -a, --auth <AUTH>...
            Set authentication. Currently supported formats: username:password,
            username:sha256:hash, username:sha512:hash (e.g. joe:123,
            joe:sha256:a665a45920422f9d417e4867efdc4fb8a04a1f3fff1fa07e998e86f7f7a27ae3)

    -c, --color-scheme <COLOR_SCHEME>
            Default color scheme [default: squirrel] [possible values: squirrel, archlinux,
            zenburn, monokai]

    -d, --color-scheme-dark <COLOR_SCHEME_DARK>
            Default color scheme [default: archlinux] [possible values: squirrel, archlinux,
            zenburn, monokai]

        --header <HEADER>...
            Set custom header for responses

    -i, --interfaces <INTERFACES>...
            Interface to listen on

        --index <index_file>
            The name of a directory index file to serve, like "index.html"

            Normally, when miniserve serves a directory, it creates a listing for that
            directory. However, if a directory contains this file, miniserve will serve that
            file instead.

    -p, --port <PORT>
            Port to use [default: 8080]

        --print-completions <shell>
            Generate completion file for a shell [possible values: bash, elvish, fish,
            powershell, zsh]

    -t, --title <TITLE>
            Shown instead of host in page title and heading

        --tls-cert <TLS_CERT>
            TLS certificate to use

        --tls-key <TLS_KEY>
            TLS private key to use

How to install

On Linux: Download miniserve-linux from the releases page and run

chmod +x miniserve-linux
./miniserve-linux

Alternatively, if you are on Arch Linux, you can do

pacman -S miniserve

On Termux

pkg install miniserve

On OSX: Download miniserve-osx from the releases page and run

chmod +x miniserve-osx
./miniserve-osx

Alternatively install with Homebrew.

brew install miniserve
miniserve

On Windows: Download miniserve-win.exe from the releases page and run

miniserve-win.exe

With Cargo: Make sure you have a recent version of Rust. Then you can run

cargo install miniserve
miniserve

With Docker: If you prefer using Docker for this, run

docker run -v /tmp:/tmp -p 8080:8080 --rm -it svenstaro/miniserve /tmp

Shell completions

If you'd like to make use of the built-in shell completion support, you need to run miniserve --print-completions <your-shell> and put the completions in the correct place for your shell. A few examples with common paths are provided below:

# For bash
miniserve --print-completions bash > ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions/miniserve
# For zsh
miniserve --print-completions zsh > /usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions/_miniserve
# For fish
miniserve --print-completions fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/miniserve.fish

systemd

A hardened systemd-compatible unit file can be found in packaging/miniserve@.service. You could install this to /etc/systemd/system/miniserve@.service and start and enable miniserve as a daemon on a specific serve path /my/serve/path like this:

systemctl enable --now miniserve@-my-serve-path

Keep in mind that you'll have to use systemd-escape to properly escape a path for this usage.

In case you want to customize the particular flags that miniserve launches with, you can use

systemctl edit miniserve@-my-serve-path

and set the [Service] part in the resulting override.conf file. For instance:

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/miniserve --enable-tar --enable-zip --no-symlinks --verbose -i ::1 -p 1234 --title hello --color-scheme monokai --color-scheme-dark monokai -- %I

Make sure to leave the %I at the very end in place or the wrong path might be served. You might additionally have to override IPAddressAllow and IPAddressDeny if you plan on making miniserve directly available on a public interface.

Binding behavior

For convenience reasons, miniserve will try to bind on all interfaces by default (if no -i is provided). It will also do that if explicitly provided with -i 0.0.0.0 or -i ::. In all of the aforementioned cases, it will bind on both IPv4 and IPv6. If provided with an explicit non-default interface, it will ONLY bind to that interface. You can provide -i multiple times to bind to multiple interfaces at the same time.

Why use this over alternatives?

• darkhttpd: Not easily available on Windows and it's not as easy as download and go.
• Python built-in webserver: Need to have Python installed, it's low performance, and also doesn't do correct MIME type handling in some cases.
• netcat: Not as convenient to use and sending directories is somewhat involved.

Releasing

This is mostly a note for me on how to release this thing:

• Make sure CHANGELOG.md is up to date.
• cargo release --dry-run <version>
• cargo release <version>
• Releases will automatically be deployed by Github Actions.
• Docker images will automatically be built by Docker Hub.
• Update Arch package.