How can I display the MD5 or SHA1 of files in a web server directory?

Question

When you don't have an index.html, most web servers will show a list of files in the directory.

Can I get preferably lighttpd (but Apache as a backup) to do show a file's MD5/SHA1 (along with standard file size, date) with no (or minimal) other programs involved? If so, how? (Debian on a very very low RAM VPS is the reason.)

Answer 1

Apache and Lighthttpd both have a directory listing mod that you need to enable, often by default these are disabled for security reasons. You can enable indexing by doing the following:

Lighthttp

To enable directory listings globally:

dir-listing.activate = "enable"

If you need it only for a directory, use conditionals:

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/download($|/)" {
     dir-listing.activate = "enable" 
   }

Apache

To enable directory listings globally:

<Directory /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/listme>
  Options +Indexes
</Directory>

However...

Directory indexing in both Apache2 and Lighthttpd do not support MDA SHA file hasing, its a simple directory view that allows you to download files, nothing more. You will need to use a PHP file manager or make your own using PHP MD5 File script. It's not a straight forward topic and your have to do some research, or pay for hosting with management.

Answer 2

To write a custom listing, you need to write a script, but PHP is not the only scripting language, and is not one of the more secure scripting languages. However, no matter what scripting language you choose, if you are not careful to write a secure script, then the script will be insecure (regardless of the language). If you merely want a textual list of files, you could write a shell script called index.sh that looks something like:

#!/bin/sh
echo "Status: 200"
echo "Content-Type: text/plain"
echo
sha256sum *

Assuming that the files do not change frequently, it would be more efficient to write a script that you run once a day to calculate the digests and to write out a static index.html of the directory index.