A discussion forum application for Gemini.
As a prerequisite, the following dependencies must be installed:
- libsqlite3-dev
- libssl-dev
Next, you'll need Rust to compile Hydepark. Once you have it, run:
cargo build --release
Gemini protocol mandates the use of TLS encryption, therefore as a prerequisite step you must have a valid SSL certificate. You can generate your own self-signed server certificate, or obtain one from a CA like Let's Encrypt.
Here's one example for generating self-signed SSL certificate using OpenSSL (replace example.com with your own domain name):
openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout example.com.key \
-nodes -x509 -out example.com.crt -subj "/CN=example.com"
Hydepark works with .pfx certificate container. To create one, run:
openssl pkcs12 -export -out cert.pfx \
-inkey example.com.key -in example.com.crt
RUST_LOG=hydepark=trace ./target/release/hydepark
See env_logger documentation on controlling log verbosity.
The service can be configured using command line arguments. For the list of available options, run: hydepark -h.
Hydepark uses external storage for storing all the information on users, forum topics, etc. By default, in-memory SQLite is used as a storage. To use persistent storage, configure one of the available storage types:
| Type | Connection string |
|---|---|
| SQLite | sqlite://[<path to SQLite database file>] |
Example of using persistent SQLite database file:
RUST_LOG=hydepark=trace ./target/debug/hydepark --db-conn=sqlite://test.db
Hydepark uses client side SSL certificates for user authentication. Clients can browse existing topics and messages anonymously, but once they wish to create a new topic or write a new message they will be asked to "register" by providing a username. The username will be linked with the SSL certificate currently used.
When client certificate is about to be expired, a warning link will be shown. Click on the link, and follow the instructions for attaching a new certificate to your account. To update the certificate explicitly, navigate to: gemini://<hostname>/update-cert-req.