Porting Boa Web Server to ELF1 Development Board

Overview

Boa is a lightweight web server designed for embedded systems. Its main advantages are stable operation under constrained hardware and strong customizability for different use cases. This article describes the steps used to port Boa to an ELF1 development board.

1. Download Boa source

Download the Boa source from SourceForge. The example used here is boa-0.94.13.tar.gz.

2. Copy source to a virtual machine and extract

elf@ubuntu:~/work/a/boa$ tar xvf boa-0.94.13.tar.gz

3. Cross-compile

Enter the source directory, set up the cross-compilation environment, configure for the target, and build:

elf@ubuntu:~/work/a/boa$ cd boa-0.94.13/src/ elf@ubuntu:~/work/a/boa/boa-0.94.13/src$ . /opt/fsl-imx-x11/4.1.15-2.0.0/environment-setup-cortexa7hf-neon-poky-linux-gnueabi elf@ubuntu:~/work/a/boa/boa-0.94.13/src$ ./configure --host=arm elf@ubuntu:~/work/a/boa/boa-0.94.13/src$ make

If you encounter a build error related to TIMEZONE_OFFSET, update src/compat.h as shown below.

Open src/compat.h for editing: elf@ubuntu:~/work/a/boa/boa-0.94.13/src$ vi compat.h Change the macro definition from: #define TIMEZONE_OFFSET(foo) foo##->tm_gmtoff To: #define TIMEZONE_OFFSET(foo) (foo)->tm_gmtoff Save and exit. Continue make; the error should no longer occur.

After a successful cross-compile, proceed to test on the development board.

4. Prepare directories on the development board

Create Boa and cgi-bin directories on the target device:

root@ELF1:~# cd /etc/ root@ELF1:/etc# mkdir boa root@ELF1:/etc# mkdir -p /www/cgi-bin/ root@ELF1:/etc# mkdir group

5. Copy the executable and configuration files to the development board

elf@ubuntu:~/work/a/boa/boa-0.94.13/src$ scp boa root@192.168.2.98:/etc/boa/ elf@ubuntu:~/work/a/boa/boa-0.94.13/src$ scp ../boa.conf root@192.168.2.98:/etc/boa/ elf@ubuntu:~/work/a/boa/boa-0.94.13/src$ scp /etc/mime.types root@192.168.2.98:/etc/

6. Edit boa.conf

Edit /etc/boa/boa.conf on the development board and make the following changes:

Change Group nogroup to Group 0.
Set log file paths to save logs under /etc/boa:
- Change ErrorLog /var/log/boa/error_log to ErrorLog /etc/boa/error_log
- Change AccessLog /var/log/boa/access_log to AccessLog /etc/boa/access_log
Uncomment or set the ServerName line: change #ServerName www.your.org.here to ServerName www.your.org.here.
Change DocumentRoot /var/www to DocumentRoot /www.
Change ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/ to ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /www/cgi-bin/.

7. Create index.html under /www/

Create the index file on the target:

root@ELF1:/etc# vi /www/index.html

Example content written to index.html (preserve the original content exactly):

<2;title>Isaigu_gateway<2;/title> <table> <tbody> <tr><td style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"><h2>Hello ElfBoard</h2></td></tr> <tr><td></td><td></td></tr> </tbody> </table>