When it comes to HTTP servers, there are many options to choose from. Apache and Nginx are two of the most well known names. Boa is a lesser known lightweight (only ~300 KB) webserver that delivers good performance. Unlike traditional webservers it doesn’t create a new fork for each connection, or, in other words, it is a single-tasking HTTP server. It has a light memory footprint and makes it suitable for running on embedded devices. Configuring Boa is also easy.
Boa runs on desktops, too. Let’s say you want to share a directory from your Ubuntu system with your colleague in a remote branch with a Microsoft Windows system but on the same office network. The files are bigger than your email attachment limit and your colleague needs to choose several files from the directory as per his needs. Boa can be a handy choice in situations like this where you would like to share a directory quickly over HTTP. Of course you can choose other options like Apache but Boa merely takes a minute to install, setup and share any directory over HTTP. This guide will show you how to do that on Ubuntu.
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