Hydra

Distributed under the GNU General Public License, Version 2.0 - see accompanying file LICENSE.txt or copy at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txt.

This daemon is designed to multiplex between different HTTP servers distinguished by the Host: header.

Usage

$ hydra [config file]

With no configuration file it expects it to be in /etc/hydra.conf.

Building

$ cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make
$ sudo make install

At this point, there is a copy of the hydra daemon installed in /usr/local/sbin/hydra.

Configuration

Hydra is configured by providing a configuration file.

A sample configuration file can be found in samples/etc.conf. This should be edited and placed in /etc/hydra.conf by default.

A sample Upstart init file can be found in samples/upstart.conf. This should be copied to /etc/init/.

Sample Apache2 configuration files can be found in samples/apache2/. A child config file should be created for each Apache2 server desired using the child.conf as a example. Base configuration can be done in the supplied base.conf file.

hydra.conf

hydra.conf is separated into sections. Each section is demarcated by a pair of square brackets. Each section name consists of a type, followed by a name. Valid types are: default, client and server.

default specifies default values for one of the connectors. The name should be the name of the connector, e.g. apache2.

client specifies a client connection, specified by a address, a port and what connections should be tagged with.

server specifies a server connection, specified by a server, a port, and a list of hostnames it will handle and a list of tags it accepts.

Each section contains properties in a key=value format. Additionally, some properties may be specified by tag, by specifying them in a key:tag=value format.

Tags

Tags in Hydra provide a mechanism for routing requests based on which client connection they arrive on. This can allow request routing based on whether a request is made over SSL or not by tagging SSL clients with a different tag to those which arrive on plain HTTP clients.

Clients

Two types of client are supported, plain and ssl. Plain provides for HTTP connections, SSL for HTTPS connections.

Servers

The following server types are supported:

• apache2 - Apache2 server, spawned on demand.
• nginx - Nginx server, spawned on demand.
• proxy - Proxy to a backend server over HTTP.
• sslproxy - Proxy to a backend server over HTTPS.
• redirect - Redirect the user to a different URL.

Developing

Suggested build environment is Debian/Ubuntu Linux.

For Debian:

• libboost-dev
• libboost-thread-dev
• libboost-system-dev
• cmake
• git
• libssl-dev