chili

Lightweight and simple RPC daemon using Node.js

Getting Started

Install the module with: npm install -g chili

Control script and NGINX configuration files are in ./assets/scripts

Chili can be run from the commandline with chili --port=8080. Port defaults to 8000. This will start an HTTP server on the specified port, ready for requests.

Chili can be run as an HTTPS server from the commandline with --key=[path to server key] and --crt=[path to server certificate].

Chili includes a lightweight commandline client for interacting with a Chili server running on another host. The client is accessible from the commandline with chili-client <args>.

Server

Chili exposes the following endpoints to remote requests:

• /eval?code= - evaluates value of code parameter in the context of the Chili process and returns the result as JSON
• /exec?cmd= - executes value of cmd parameter as a bash command. Accepts options for cwd, maxBuffer (maximum buffer size to be returned), encoding (encoding type for response), env (a hash of environment variables). Returns an error, stdout, and stderr of the executed command.
• /ps?cmd= - spawn a process with the given cmd. Accepts args as an array of commandline arguments, along with options for cwd, encoding, autokill (kills the process when the request ends), stream (streams back stdout or stderr if set to stderr as response), content_type (if stream is set, this sets the Content-Type header in the response), uid (the user id to run the process as), gid (the group id to run the process as), env (a hash of environment variables), and stdin (if true, uses the request as the stdin for the process. Returns a chunked response of pseudo-XML, enclosing chunks of stdout, stderr, and error in <tag></tag>. If stream is set, response streams back the specified output stream.

Access Control

Just in case it doesn't go without saying, unprotected remote access is a REALLY BAD IDEA. Chili is meant to be used as a quick and easy RPC tool, mainly for use with internal servers, or behind other access controls such as a web server (i.e. NGINX) or a firewall. When used with HTTPS, HTTP authentication, and requester whitelisting, Chili might be suitable for more public use, assuming requesters can be trusted.

Chili includes some basic application-level tools for controlling access and user rights. By including authenticate as true and users as an environmental variable array, Chili will require HTTP authentication for all endpoints. Elements of the users array should be objects including username and password (used for HTTP authentication), allow (a regular expression that a full url must match in order to accept the request from the user), and disallow (a regular expression that a full url must not match in order to be accepted).

Again, Chili is not meant to provide any kind of sandboxed or public remote access to a system. If you need something like this, check out some of the other fine solutions that are much more battle-hardened and production-ready.

Client

Chili ships with a basic commandline client for making remote requests to Chili servers. The client accepts the following options:

• -H - the host domain (including optional port) of the Chili server
• -u - username for server
• -p - password for the server
• -C - bash command to be executed on the server (hits the /exec endpoint)
• -E - code to be evaluated on the server
• -P - process to be spawned on the server
• -a - arguments (array) to be included with spawned process
• -q - run quietly, do not output Chili responses
• -s - stream back Chili response as it is received
• -ssl - accept invalid/ self-signed SSL certificates
• -uid - run remote processes as this user id
• process options - see above for options accepted for spawning processes through Chili

Note: filesystem endpoints are not included in the client. If you're at the commandline, there are other, more secure options for transferring files between hosts.

The commandline client is also included as a Node module for use in projects.

License

Copyright (c) 2014 Ben Sack Licensed under the MIT license.