Pslink a "Private Short Link page"

The target audience of this tool are small entities that need a url shortener. The shortened urls can be publicly resolved but only registered users can create short urls. Every registered user can see all shorted urls but only modify its own. Admin users can invite other accounts and edit everything that can be edited (also urls created by other accounts).

So in general this is more a shared short url bookmark webpage than a short url service.

Demo

A demo instance is running under https://demo.pslink.teilgedanken.de/app/

The Username and Password are both demo. Do not use this for any production use case as the database is wiped every 15 minutes. If your created links/users are suddenly missing this is due to such a database wipe.

What users can do

• Guests (no account):

  • click on link, get redirected to the page
  • error on invalid or deleted link

• Users (regular account):

  • view all existing links
  • modify all own links
  • create new links
  • download qr-codes of the links
  • modify own "profile" settings

• Admins (privileged account):

  • everything from users
  • modify all links
  • list all users
  • modify all profiles
  • create new users
  • make users administrators
  • make administrators normal users

What the program can do

• Command line

  • create and read from a .env file in the current directory
  • create and migrate the database
  • create an admin user
  • run the webserver

• Service

  • redirect according to the database
  • admin interface via wasm

Usage

Run the binary containerized

You can most easily run the container with podman or docker. This will launch the pslink service in demo mode. So whenever the container is restarted everything is reset to the demo data.

If you want to run in production mode you will need to set up and persist the .env file and the links.db sqlite database. See the Container Documentation.

$ podman run ghcr.io/enaut/pslink:latest

Install the binary

The Pslink bundle can be downloaded from the latest release at: https://github.com/enaut/pslink/releases

Just extract the bundle where you like. A sample install might be:

# mkdir -p /opt/pslink
# cd /opt/pslink
# wget https://github.com/enaut/pslink/releases/latest/download/pslink-linux-x86_64-bundle.tgz
# tar -xf pslink-linux-x86_64-bundle.tgz
# /opt/pslink/pslink help

You could now adjust your PATH or setup an alias or just call the binary with the full path /opt/pslink/pslink

Install with cargo

cargo install pslink does not (yet) produce a working binary! Use the "install binary" or "build from source" approach

Build from source

Checkout the git repository and within its directory issue the following commands. Internet is required and some packages will be installed during the process.

$ cargo install dioxus-cli
$ dx bundle --release --package web

If that succeeds you should now be able to call Pslink. The binary is located at target/dx/web/release/web/server. The directory target/dx/web/release/web/ can be moved wherever you want it to be.

In the binary releases and in this README the server binary is renamed to pslink.

Configuration and setup

To read the help and documentation of additional options call:

 pslink help

To get Pslink up and running use the commands in the following order:

1. pslink generate-env

   this will generate a .env file in the current directory with the default settings. Edit this file to your liking. You can however skip this step and provide all the parameters via command line or environment variable. It is not recommended to provide PSLINK_SECRET with command line parameters as they can be read by every user on the system.

2. pslink migrate-database

   will create a sqlite database in the location specified in the .env file.

3. pslink create-admin

   create an initial admin user. As the page has no "register" function this is required to do anything useful. The command is interactive so you will be asked the username and password of the new admin user.

4. pslink runserver

   If everything is set up correctly this command will start the service. You should now be able to go to your url at http://localhost/app/ and you should be presented with a login screen where you can login with the credentials you just created (use the username not the email).

Run the service

If everything is already correctly set up just do pslink runserver to launch the server.

Update

To update to a newer version execute the commands in the following order

1. stop the service
2. download and install or build the new binary
3. run pslink migrate-database
4. run the server again pslink runserver

Help

For a list of options use pslink help. If the help does not provide enough clues please file an issue at: https://github.com/enaut/pslink/issues/new. Feel free to do so even for simple questions, comments or requests!

Installation on the server using systemd

While there are probably millions of ways to set up Pslink as a service on a server, here is an example using systemd.

In this case a dedicated pslink user and group is used with the users home directory at /opt/pslink. Some additional settings are in place to protect the system a little should anything go wrong.

1. create the user

   sudo adduser pslink --home-dir /opt/pslink

2. create the directory and change its owner and permissions

   sudo mkdir -p /opt/pslink
   sudo chown pslink:pslink /opt/pslink
   sudo chmod 700 /opt/pslink

3. create the initial config file and database

   cd /opt/pslink
   sudo -u pslink /opt/pslink/pslink generate-env
   sudo -u pslink /opt/pslink/pslink migrate-database
   sudo -u pslink /opt/pslink/pslink create-admin

4. create the systemd service file at /etc/systemd/system/pslink.service and adjust it to your liking:

   cat /etc/systemd/system/pslink.service
   [Unit]
   Description=Pslink the Urlshortener
   Documentation=https://github.com/enaut/Pslink
   Wants=network.target
   After=network.target
   
   [Service]
   User=pslink
   Group=pslink
   EnvironmentFile=-/opt/pslink/.env
   
   ProtectHome=true
   ProtectSystem=full
   PrivateDevices=true
   NoNewPrivileges=true
   PrivateTmp=true
   InaccessibleDirectories=/root /sys /srv /media -/lost+found
   ReadWriteDirectories=/opt/pslink
   WorkingDirectory=/opt/pslink
   ExecStart=/opt/pslink/pslink runserver
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target
   

5. start and install the service

   sudo systemctl enable --now pslink

6. check the log file for errors:

   sudo systemctl status pslink
   sudo journalctl -u pslink