Before the World Wide Web, there was Gopher. But then HTTP took over and Gopher all but died. It’s made a bit of a comeback and has a spiritual successor in another protocol, Gemini. Let’s install some clients.

Lagrange is a GUI client for Gopher and Gemini. They provide binary releases, so it’s a bit easier to get started with.

vger is in OpenBSD ports, so let’s use that.

pkg_add vger

cat << EOF > /etc/inetd.conf
127.0.0.1:11965 stream tcp nowait _vger /usr/local/bin/vger vger
EOF

cat <<EOF > /etc/relayd.conf
log connection

tcp protocol "gemini" {
   tls keypair strongrandom.com
}

relay "gemini" {
    listen on 0.0.0.0 port 1965 tls
    protocol "gemini"
    forward to 127.0.0.1 port 11965
}
EOF

# SEE NOTES BELOW
cd /etc/ssl
ln -s strongrandom.com.fullchain.pem strongrandom.com.crt

rcctl enable relayd inetd
rcctl start relayd inetd

If you are using Let’s Encrypt and acme-client(1), this configuration can share that certificate.

Geomyidae is in OpenBSD ports, so let’s use that.

pkg_add geomyidae
rcctl enable geomyidae
rcctl start geomyidae

Content is served from /var/gopher.

Be sure and open tcp/70 in your firewall configuration.

Success! gopher://strongrandom.com