Armadietto

:warning: WARNING

Please do not consider armadietto production ready, this project is still considered experimental. As with any alpha-stage storage technology, you MUST expect that it will eat your data and take precautions against this. You SHOULD expect that its APIs and storage schemas will change before it is labelled stable.

What is this?

Armadietto is a RemoteStorage server written for Node.js.

This is a complete rewrite of reStore.

Installation

1. Ensure you have a maintained version of Node installed.
2. If you will be using Apache as a reverse proxy, ensure it is version 2.4.49 or later.
3. Run npm -g i armadietto

Usage

See the notes directory for configuring a reverse proxy and other recipes.

1. Run armadietto -e to see a sample configuration file.
2. Create a configuration file at /etc/armadietto/conf (or elsewhere). See below for values and their meanings.
3. Run armadietto -c /etc/armadietto/conf

To see all options, run armadietto -h. Set the environment DEBUG to log the headers of every request.

Use as a library

The following Node script will run a basic server:

process.umask(077);

const Armadietto = require('armadietto');
store   = new Armadietto.FileTree({path: 'path/to/storage'}),

server  = new Armadietto({
  store:  store,
  http:   {host: '127.0.0.1', port: 8000}
});

server.boot();

The host option is optional and specifies the hostname the server will listen on. Its default value is 0.0.0.0, meaning it will listen on all interfaces.

The server does not allow users to sign up, out of the box. If you need to allow that, use the allow.signup option:

var server = new Armadietto({
  store: store,
  http:  { host: '127.0.0.1', port: 8000 },
  allow: { signup: true }
});

If you navigate to http://localhost:8000/ you should then see a sign-up link in the navigation.

Storage security

In production, we recommend that you restrict access to the files managed by your armadietto server as much as possible. This is particularly true if you host your storage on a machine with other web applications; you need to protect your files in the event that one of those apps is exploited.

You should take these steps to keep your storage safe:

• Pick a unique Unix user to run your server process; no other process on the box should run as this user: sudo useradd armadietto --system --no-create-home

• Do not run other applications as root, or as any user that could access files owned by your armadietto user

• Make sure the directory path/to/storage cannot be read, written or executed by anyone but this user: sudo chmod 0700 /path/to/storage && sudo chown armadietto:armadietto /path/to/storage

• Do not run armadietto as root; if you need to bind to port 80 or 443 use a reverse proxy like nginx, Apache2, caddy, lighttpd or enable bind capability: setcap 'cap_net_bind_service=+ep' `which armadietto`

• Ideally, run your storage inside a container or on a dedicated machine

If you're using the Redis backend, apply similar access restrictions to the database and to any files containing the database access credentials.

Serving over HTTPS

Since RemoteStorage is a system for storing arbitrary user-specific data, and since it makes use of OAuth 2.0, we strongly recommend you serve it over a secure connection. You can boot the server to listen for HTTP or HTTPS requests or both.
If armadietto is behind a reverse proxy on the same machine, the proxy can handle TLS, so armadietto only needs to set enable and force in the https configuration. The reverse proxy must set the header x-forwarded-proto (or x-forwarded-ssl or x-forwarded-scheme) in the request passed to Armadietto. Armadietto does not yet support the Forwarded header.

This configuration boots the app on two ports, one secure and one plaintext:

const server = new Armadietto({
  store: store,
  http: {
    host: '127.0.0.1',
    port: 8000
  },
  https: {
    force: true,
    host:  '127.0.0.1',
    port:  4343,
    key:   'path/to/ssl.key',
    cert:  'path/to/ssl.crt',
    ca:    'path/to/ca.pem'    // optional
  },
  logging: {
    stdout: ["debug"],
    log_files: ["error"],
    log_dir: "./some-log-dir"
  }

});

server.boot();

For example, if you use certificates from Lets Encrypt, you will set

    cert: "/etc/letsencrypt/live/domainname/cert.pem",
    key: "/etc/letsencrypt/live/domainname/privkey.pem"

where domainname is (usually) the DNS name of your server.

The force: true line in the https section means the app will:

• Return HTTPS URLs in WebFinger responses
• Force sign-up and OAuth login pages onto an HTTPS connection
• Refuse to process POST authentication requests over insecure connections
• Block insecure storage requests and revoke the client's access

Armadietto considers a request to be secure if:

• armadietto itself acts as an SSL terminator and the connection to it is encrypted
• The X-Forwarded-SSL header has the value on
• The X-Forwarded-Proto header has the value https
• The X-Forwarded-Scheme header has the value https

So you can have an SSL-terminating proxy in front of armadietto as long as it sets one of those headers, and does not let external clients set them. In this setup, you can set https.force = true but omit https.port; this means armadietto itself will not accept encrypted connections but will apply the above behaviour to enforce secure connections.

Storage backends

armadietto supports pluggable storage backends, and comes with a file system implementation out of the box (redis storage backend is on the way in feature/redis branch):

• Armadietto.FileTree - Uses the filesystem hierarchy and stores each item in its own individual file. Content and metadata are stored in separate files so the content does not need base64-encoding and can be hand-edited. Must only be run using a single server process.

All the backends support the same set of features, including the ability to store arbitrary binary data with content types and modification times.

They are configured as follows:

// To use the file tree store:
const store = new Armadietto.FileTree({path: 'path/to/storage'});

// Then create the server with your store:
const server = new Armadietto({
  store:  store,
  http:   {port: process.argv[2]}
});

server.boot();

Debugging an installation

Set the environment DEBUG to enable logging. For example DEBUG=true armadietto -c /etc/armadietto/conf

Development

See DEVELOPMENT.md

License

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2012-2015 James Coglan
Copyright (c) 2018 remoteStorage contributors

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.