Simplest Caddyfile for local files not working but works with caddy CLI options

Help
1

1. The problem I’m having:

I have a local directory with an index.html file, and I want to serve it locally, so the Caddyfile is very simple. I have a lot of other Caddyfiles, much more complicated, and everything works flawlessly.

My first test was with the caddy CLI : caddy file-server --listen :2019, executed in the directory, and everything works.

But then I tried this Caddyfile, thinking it was identical with the cli options :

http://localhost:2019 {
    log
    file_server
}

and it doesn’t work. The logs even in debug mode are not helpful to me :

$ caddy run
2024/11/08 10:44:59.258	INFO	using adjacent Caddyfile
2024/11/08 10:44:59.259	INFO	adapted config to JSON	{"adapter": "caddyfile"}
2024/11/08 10:44:59.259	WARN	Caddyfile input is not formatted; run 'caddy fmt --overwrite' to fix inconsistencies	{"adapter": "caddyfile", "file": "Caddyfile", "line": 2}
2024/11/08 10:44:59.260	INFO	admin	admin endpoint started	{"address": "localhost:2019", "enforce_origin": false, "origins": ["//localhost:2019", "//[::1]:2019", "//127.0.0.1:2019"]}
2024/11/08 10:44:59.260	DEBUG	http.auto_https	adjusted config	{"tls": {"automation":{"policies":[{}]}}, "http": {"servers":{"srv0":{"listen":[":2019"],"routes":[{"handle":[{"handler":"subroute","routes":[{"handle":[{"browse":{},"handler":"file_server","hide":["./Caddyfile"]}]}]}],"terminal":true}],"automatic_https":{"skip":["localhost"]},"logs":{"logger_names":{"localhost":[""]}}}}}}
2024/11/08 10:44:59.260	INFO	tls.cache.maintenance	started background certificate maintenance	{"cache": "0xc00065f100"}
2024/11/08 10:44:59.260	DEBUG	http	starting server loop	{"address": "[::]:2019", "tls": false, "http3": false}
2024/11/08 10:44:59.260	INFO	http.log	server running	{"name": "srv0", "protocols": ["h1", "h2", "h3"]}
2024/11/08 10:44:59.261	INFO	autosaved config (load with --resume flag)	{"file": "/home/marrco/.config/caddy/autosave.json"}
2024/11/08 10:44:59.261	INFO	serving initial configuration
2024/11/08 10:44:59.266	INFO	tls	storage cleaning happened too recently; skipping for now	{"storage": "FileStorage:/home/marrco/.local/share/caddy", "instance": "f02a28c7-4ce7-475e-8608-eb5358e4c9dd", "try_again": "2024/11/09 10:44:59.266", "try_again_in": 86399.999999449}
2024/11/08 10:44:59.267	INFO	tls	finished cleaning storage units
2024/11/08 10:45:04.992	INFO	admin.api	received request	{"method": "GET", "host": "127.0.0.1:2019", "uri": "/index.html", "remote_ip": "127.0.0.1", "remote_port": "51224", "headers": {"Accept":["text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8"],"Accept-Encoding":["gzip, deflate, br, zstd"],"Accept-Language":["fr,fr-FR;q=0.8,en-US;q=0.5,en;q=0.3"],"Connection":["keep-alive"],"Cookie":["CSRF-Token-4ZEIO=XSH4znbRXSnGTN7LmbXAFYCqTjzUU9Ri; CSRF-Token-V5VIE=pdHLtPVKetNamMnD46LdSAkqq6rX72Zq; CSRF-Token-4ZEIOVS=vi7SMHrbFmCMNtNver59U7wtGeWjXQi93CKdLRgXX25rKuHzXd6aqbPTkkVy9MoP; CSRF-Token-V5VIEAQ=VxuXkqACW7Zfw9JAVGqEu7ApWY6hfZzdP2dxDZHYWKWmdewCY5hx6C33nepu3wRH"],"Priority":["u=0, i"],"Sec-Fetch-Dest":["document"],"Sec-Fetch-Mode":["navigate"],"Sec-Fetch-Site":["none"],"Sec-Fetch-User":["?1"],"Upgrade-Insecure-Requests":["1"],"User-Agent":["Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:132.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/132.0"]}}

I don’t want to use https, even locally with self certificate because my port 80 is already in use.

What do I do wrong here ? I guess it’s a simple mistake on my end but I cannot find it.

Thank you

3. Caddy version:

caddy v2.8.4 on ubuntu 24.04

2

In what way does it “not work”? You didn’t show any evidence of a problem. Not sure how you expect help without showing the problem.

1 Like
3

you’re right sorry, I was so much expecting an answer like “of course it’s obvious you made this rookie mistake …” that I forgot to add this.

When I navigate to http://localhost:2019, and caddy is using the Caddyfile above, I get a 404 error.

When I run caddy with the cli options above without caddyfile, it works well.

4

Use a different port. Caddy’s admin API runs on port 2019. Use 8080 or something.

1 Like
5

Ah thank you.

Did this, and then now I get an empty blank page, so I’ll keep investigating. It still working ok with the cli.

6

Show exactly what you tried. Show your Caddyfile and an curl -v command output.

1 Like
7

I already posted the caddyfile, I just changed the port like you said.
And the blank page is juste a blank page, the request returns nothing, with content-length: 0.

But you were right in the beginning, changing the port fixed the issue, I was requesting 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost. When using localhost, I works ! I guess that when setting localhost in the caddyfile it allows only localhost, but running caddy from cli also allows by default 127.0.0.1.

thanks

8

Okay, then show that.

Okay, and show what you’re doing with curl -v.

Seriously, we need to see exactly what you’re doing, not a retelling of what you think you did.

Correct, the site address is a Host matcher, so it only matches requests with the same host. See Caddyfile Concepts — Caddy Documentation

1 Like
9

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