Hey, I'm trying to test this on a google cloud ser...

# kweb

[blakelee]

Hey, I'm trying to test this on a google cloud server but I'm getting this warning WARN io.netty.util.internal.MacAddressUtil - Failed to find a usable hardware address from the network interfaces; using random bytes: Which I think is not allowing it to work

[Ian]

Ah, I've seen that, let me try to remember....

[Ian]

Hmm, is it actually preventing your app from working? I think it’s a Netty issue (which kweb uses), but from what I’m reading it should be harmless

[blakelee]

Is says it's listening but I can't connect. I figured that it is it's own webserver and I don't need to install apache or anything

[Ian]

That’s correct, Kweb is standalone

[Ian]

where are you trying to connect from? Could it be a firewall issue?

[Ian]

I have tested Kweb on Google Cloud, but it was a few months ago

[Ian]

I think this is the issue: https://github.com/netty/netty/issues/3490

[blakelee]

I'm trying to connect with the external ip from the vm console. I can check the firewall rules. So far it has http/https traffic enabled

[Ian]

as an experiment, it might be worth checking using curl from the command line

[Ian]

(obviously kweb won’t like this, because curl doesn’t support javascript, but you should at least pull down some HTML)

[Ian]

command line on the google cloud instance, that is

[Ian]

you’ve configured kweb’s port to 80?

[blakelee]

yup!

[blakelee]

It's just a simple hello world that works on my main computer

[Ian]

what is the console output from kweb? (you may need to set up a logger to get output)

[blakelee]

I'll have to recompile it to get the logs to see if anything is happening

[Ian]

Ok, unfortunately I think that might be necessary to diagnose further

[blakelee]

I did curl 35.197.37.165 and nothing. I'll get back to you with the logs and see what it says

[Ian]

But rest assured that I’ve got kweb working on Google Cloud in the past, it’s probably something silly 🙂

[blakelee]

thanks for being quick with the responses!

[Ian]

I aim to please 😉

[Ian]

Thanks for trying kweb 🙂

[blakelee]

I am running the server using java -jar name.jar

I tried curl 127.0.0.1:80 and it's saying connection refused 😕 even though it's in my processes as running

I also did debug = true and nothing is popping up as even trying to connect

[Ian]

so there is no console output whatsoever? Is there a logger implementation? eg. compile group: 'org.slf4j', name: 'slf4j-simple', version: '1.6.1'

[blakelee]

I have that added. All I have to do is just debug = true in the Kweb arguments?

[Ian]

it should be producing console output with or without debug = true

[Ian]

after you type java -jar ... there is no console output whatsoever?

[blakelee]

I get this

630 [main] WARN io.netty.util.internal.MacAddressUtil - Failed to find a usable hardware address from the network interfaces; using random bytes: 46:20:64:35:c9:bf:39:34
712 [main] INFO io.kweb.Kweb - KWeb is listening on port 80

[Ian]

hmmm

[blakelee]

Do I need to set the superuser bit?

[Ian]

ah, that might be it - you might need to run it as sudo

[Ian]

because port 80 is reserved

[Ian]

surprised that doesn’t generate an error though

[blakelee]

running it as sudo gave me some results when I use curl

[Ian]

that’s promising…

[blakelee]

Still can't connect from the external ip though

[Ian]

external ip but still from the machine itself?

[blakelee]

just tested curl on my home machine. It works when trying the external ip

[blakelee]

but in a browser it doesn't parse

[Ian]

what is the browser error?

[blakelee]

It's saying it refused to connect

[blakelee]

ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

[Ian]

so curl works, browser doesn’t, but curl and browser are doing the exact same thing?

[blakelee]

aha!

[blakelee]

typing the IP in the browser defaults to https

[Ian]

ah

[blakelee]

however I'm only listening to port 80

[Ian]

bingo

[blakelee]

So the fix is a) run as su and b) make sure you're not using https

[Ian]

yeah, kweb doesn’t support HTTPS yet. It should be very easy to add (since netty does the work), but hasn’t been done yet

[blakelee]

Is there a way to redirect traffic to port 80 if it sees a call to 8080 has been made?

[blakelee]

that might be something I can do in the VM instance

[Ian]

probably, some kind of proxy that decodes/encodes the HTTPS to HTTP

[Ian]

also probably not too hard to improve Kweb to do it, if you are feeling a tad more ambitious

[blakelee]

without an ssl cert is there any encryption actually happening besides just saying https:// in front of the url

[blakelee]

I just might have to look at the source.

[blakelee]

I'm getting a ton better at Kotlin so it might make some sense

[Ian]

yes, it will encrypt I think, but they’ll probably get a nasty browser warning

[Ian]

this is where the Netty magic happens - https://github.com/kwebio/core/blob/master/src/main/kotlin/io/kweb/Kweb.kt

[Ian]

You shouldn’t need to grok everything going on in that class to extend support to include HTTPS, it’s mostly just understanding the points of contact with Ktor (which wraps Netty)

[blakelee]

I'm wondering if I could make Kweb listen on a list of ports instead of just one

[Ian]

That class needs to be broken up and simplified

[Ian]

I don’t see any reason it couldn’t listen on multiple ports, but note that there is more to HTTPS than just listening on the HTTPS port

[Ian]

browsers will probably throw a fit if they find a HTTP server on a HTTPS port, as they should 🙂

[blakelee]

I unfortunately don't know anything about how the web works. My Networks class didn't do a great job haha

[Ian]

HTTPS is mostly just HTTP wrapped in an encryption layer

[blakelee]

So it essentially just needs to check if it's being contacted by the https port, if it is, decrypt it with a key that we provide

[Ian]

but I don’t think you’ll need to get into the weeds of that, since Ktor should have explicit HTTPS support

[Ian]

Right, but Ktor/Netty should handle that

[blakelee]

I will look into Ktor then and see how it does it

[Ian]

you’ll just need to tell it what port to listen to, and make sure it knows it’s supposed to be a HTTPS server, not HTTP

[Ian]

then there are certs, but again, Ktor should handle that plumbing

[Ian]

the guys on #ktor are normally very friendly and helpful

[Ian]

And if you can create a kweb pull request, I’m more than happy to review and merge

[blakelee]

So is Kweb essentially a big wrapper so you don't have to deal with all the routing stuff of ktor? Kweb let's you start on a website NOW instead of figuring out the details

[blakelee]

I'll do that! I'm trying to get employed so contributions will be great for prospective employers

[Ian]

Kweb occupies a funny place in the normal web software stack. It’s a bit like React + Node.js, because it straddles both web server and web browser

[blakelee]

That's why I'm using it. I hate JS so was looking for a Kotlin solution

[blakelee]

plus debugging is wayyyy easier

[Ian]

Ktor handles everything up to routing HTTP/HTTPS, kweb shits on top of that

[Ian]

erm, “sits”

[blakelee]

haha

[Ian]

possible “shits” too, time will tell 😉

[blakelee]

dang dude, you have your own wiki page. I might be talking to the next linus torvalds of the web world

[Ian]

Nah, I don’t have a cool Finnish accent