Hiawatha (web server)

Hiawatha is a lightweight and secure open-source web server designed for both personal and small to medium-sized websites. It emphasizes security, ease of configuration, and resource efficiency. Its creator, Hugo Leisink, aimed to provide a user-friendly alternative to more complex web servers like Apache or Nginx.

Key features of Hiawatha include:

• Security Features: Hiawatha incorporates several built-in security measures, such as protection against cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection attacks. It also includes features to limit abuse and prevent distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

• Ease of Configuration: The server's configuration file is designed to be simple and easy to understand, allowing users to quickly set up and manage their websites.

• Resource Efficiency: Hiawatha is known for its low memory footprint and efficient use of CPU resources, making it suitable for systems with limited resources.

• Chroot Support: Hiawatha supports chroot, which isolates the server within a specified directory, enhancing security by limiting the potential damage from successful attacks.

• Reverse Proxy Support: It can act as a reverse proxy, forwarding requests to other servers.

• URL Rewriting: Hiawatha provides URL rewriting capabilities, allowing for the creation of cleaner and more search engine-friendly URLs.

Hiawatha is primarily used on Linux and Unix-like operating systems. It is typically installed via package managers or compiled from source. Although Hiawatha is a capable web server, its market share is smaller than Apache or Nginx.