Using the port of lighttpd on his jailbroken iPhone, Mark Hoekstra of GEEKtechnique offers real-world proof that an iPhone can, indeed, function as a web server. He put up a static page and served 411 unique visitors during the time his server was offline for maintenance. Obviously, that's not battle-testing for a busier server, and the lack of database queries certainly aided the capacity of the tiny server, but it's definitely a fun example of the capabilities of a (hacked) iPhone.
Apache has also been ported, along with Python, vim, curl and other tools web servers can make good use of. There's a good possibility we'll see similar scenarios as time progresses, especially as the hardware capabilities of the iPhone improve. So, is that a backup web server in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
Thanks, Mike!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-05-2008 @ 2:47PM
Jash Sayani said...
Why not ?
After all Services like Apache are already being used through Installer....
Reply
5-05-2008 @ 2:55PM
Eric said...
S60 has had an AMP stack for some time.
http://mymobilesite.net/screenshots/
Reply
5-05-2008 @ 3:27PM
mark said...
No one wants a lame S60 though. They do want iPhones.
5-05-2008 @ 3:33PM
jules said...
This is news? I did this to my Touch over 4 months ago. I wrote a php page to find out stats from my itunes and iphoto library, too.
Reply
5-05-2008 @ 3:34PM
Fernando said...
Yeah, who wants a S60 with way more server features (seriously, click the link), or more features in general when you can have a shiny iphone?
That's the target audience of the iphone after all eh?
Reply
5-05-2008 @ 3:35PM
Fernando said...
oh damn this comment system :P
5-05-2008 @ 3:37PM
Frank Furter said...
Yeah. What person that reads THE UNOFFICAL APPLE WEBLOG would want an iPhone. Losers.
5-05-2008 @ 3:42PM
Fernando said...
I dunno, I read it for the mac news, I just had to chime in when someone's flaunting a feature that already existed on other phones.
5-05-2008 @ 5:05PM
Zak said...
Fernando, you're the type of person that if a cure for cancer were found, you would be that guy who would chime in with "Yeah but they found a cure for Polio in 1952. This is nothing special."
You have a classic case of "I Don't Get It™". Nobody asked the question "what other devices can you do this on?" That's because we're talking about the iPhone, and nobody cares what other devices you can do this on. I'm interested because this was done on an iPhone, and I own an iPhone. This is "Relevant To My Interests™". In fact this sort of article is why I'm on The Unofficial Apple Weblog.
If you honestly think I give any measure of crap about the S60, you're horribly mistaken. Did you think I was going to sell my iPhone and go out and buy an S60 just because you said something about it? What was the point of you (and Eric) posting here at all? Did you think at all before you posted?
Common sense people, common sense.
5-05-2008 @ 3:53PM
Sjakelien said...
WHERE THE HELL IS MYSQL?
I want IAMP!
Reply
5-09-2008 @ 9:42AM
Jukka Eklund said...
Hi, here is PAMP (Personal Apache MySQL PHP) for S60: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pamp. If you don't absolutely need PHP and MySQL, here is the "consumer" version as linked already: http://mymobilesite.net. (You can now also install PHP and MySQL on top of that, too. See http://blogs.s60.com/mws/2008/05/pamp_your_phone_part_2.html)
5-06-2008 @ 11:00AM
lo_fye said...
Extrapolate this out a few years and we'll be able to use our GPS-enabled iphones as our *primary* web servers.
That could enable neat stuff, like viewing realtime video+audio feeds of all the people *currently* looking at your site/phone, if they have flash and an enabled webcam... and/or show you all the geo-locations of the people looking at your site.
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