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<title>How to set up your own gemini server</title>
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<header><h1> Creating and serving gemini capsules </h1></header>
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<h2 id="whatis">What is Gemini?</h2>
<p><a href="https://gemini.circumlunar.space" target="_blank">Gemini</a> is a new internet protocol which is different from the HTTP and Gopher. It's much cleaner and has a growing community and audience of hackers.</p>
<h3>Why use gemini protocol?</h3>
<ul>
<li>Gemini capsules (webpages of gemini) are lightweight, minimal, and don't use many resources to operate.</li>
<li>It can run along with your websites. Gemini capsules use port 1965 by default. Your webserver can run at port 80 or 443 along with gemini server at port 1965. </li>
<li>By exploring an alternative protocol, you can check different ways to serve data and blogs.</li>
</ul>
<p>To access any gemini urls i.e. <code>gemini://example.org</code>, you can use any gemini client such as <a href="https://github.com/makeworld-the-better-one/amfora" target="_blank">amfora</a>, <a href="https://gmi.skyjake.fi/lagrange" target="_blank">lagrange</a>, <a href="https://thelambdalab.xyz/elpher/" target="_blank">elpher</a>, etc.
<h2 id="instructions">Instructions</h2>
<h3>Create a gemini user</h3>
<p>
It is most secure and clean to have a separate <code>gemini</code> user, so let's create one:
</p>
<pre><code>useradd -m -s /bin/bash gemini</code></pre>
<p>Now log in as <code>gemini</code> with the following command:</p>
<pre><code>su -l gemini</code></pre>
<p>To create and serve a gemini capsule, we need three basic steps:</p>
<ol>
<li>Content – the webpages in our capsule</li>
<li>TLS certificate – Gemini requires encrypted connection.</li>
<li>Gemini server – the program that makes our capsule available (similar to Nginx for HTTP)</li>
</ol>
<p>As the gemini user, we can create three different directories to simplify the process:</p>
<pre><code>mkdir -p ~/gemini/{content,certificate,server}</code></pre>
<h3>Content</h3>
<p>This will be the directory where you capsule files will be contained. Gemini uses text/gemini markup (in place of HTTP's equivalent HTML). It heavily borrows from Markdown. Similar to .html or .md, gemini uses .gmi as its extension.</p>
<p>To create one gemini file, go inside the <code>content</code> directory and create one <code>index.gmi</code> file.</p>
<pre><code>nano gemini/content/index.gmi</code></pre>
<p>We can add the content we want in our Gemini capsule here:</p>
<pre><code># This is Sample Gemini page
## With header 1 and header 2
And a short paragraph like this.
=> /index.gmi Link to the same page</code></pre>
<h3>TLS certificate</h3>
<p>Go to the <code>certificate</code> directory which we created earlier and generate a TLS certificate using OpenSSL.</p>
<pre><code>cd ~/gemini/certificate/
openssl req -new -subj "/CN=<strong>example.org</strong>" -x509 -newkey ec -pkeyopt ec_paramgen_curve:prime256v1 -days 3650 -nodes -out cert.pem -keyout key.pem</code></pre>
<h3>Gemini server</h3>
<h4>Download and prepare the server</h4>
<p>There are <a href="https://gemini.circumlunar.space/software">many gemini server software choices available</a>.
We will use <code>agate</code> server for now. This is a simple gemini server written in Rust.</p>
<p>It's a good idea to always get the most recent version, which you can see <a href="https://github.com/mbrubeck/agate/releases">on the agate releases page</a>. At the time of this writing, that is agate v3.1.0 which we will now download. We will download it to the <code>server</code> directory we made.</p>
<pre><code>cd ~/gemini/server
wget https://github.com/mbrubeck/agate/releases/download/v3.1.0/agate.x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.gz</code></pre>
<p>Unzip the gz, then rename and make it executable:</p>
<pre><code>gunzip agate.x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.gz
mv agate.x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu agate-server
chmod +x agate-server</code></pre>
<h4>Create a system service</h4>
<p>Now we need to create a systemd service to autostart and manage agate.
The gemini user does not have permission to do this, so press <code>ctrl-d</code> to log out of the gemini user and return to root.
As root, create the file below by opening it in your text editor (nano, vim, etc.):</p>
<pre><code>nano /etc/systemd/system/agate.service</code></pre>
<p>Add the following content to the file <strong>customizing highlighted text</strong> to your use.</p>
<pre><code>[Unit]
Description=agate
After=network.target
[Service]
User=gemini
Type=simple
ExecStart=/home/gemini/gemini/server/agate-server --content /home/gemini/gemini/content --certs /home/gemini/gemini/certificate/ --hostname <strong>example.org</strong> --lang <strong>en-US</strong>
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target</code></pre>
<p>Now we are ready to run server. Enable and run agate server.</p>
<pre><code>systemctl enable agate
systemctl start agate</code></pre>
<h4>Firewall</h4>
<p>Lastly, if you have a firewall running, remember to open port 1965, which is the port number used by gemini:</p>
<pre><code>ufw allow 1965</code></pre>
<h2>Finalization</h2>
<p>Now your server should be running. If everything went okay, you can access your gemini capsule via any gemini client with a url like this:</p>
<pre><code>gemini://<strong>example.org</strong></code></pre>
<p>Sample gemini site for reference:</p>
<pre><code>gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space</code></pre>
<p>Enjoy your first gemini capsule.</p>
<p>
For information about how to write in "gemtext" the markup language in Gemini, see this site: <a href="https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/gemtext.gmi">https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/gemtext.gmi</a>.
As you might guess it also has an analogous gemini capsule here: gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/gemtext.gmi
</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Written by <a href="https://nihar.page">nihar.page</a></em></p>
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