Algernon on Ubuntu 24.04

Algernon is a small, self contained web and application server written in Go. The idea behind it is that one static binary should be enough to serve a whole dynamic site. It serves ordinary static files, and it also renders on the fly: Markdown becomes a themed HTML page, Lua files execute server side and write their own response, and Amber, Pongo2, GCSS, TypeScript and JSX are handled the same way. HTTP/2 and TLS are built in. So is a datastore, so a Lua page can keep state without you standing up a database.

That means there is no PHP FPM pool to supervise, no application server to deploy your code into, no reverse proxy in front, and no database daemon behind. There is one process, one configuration surface, and your content directory. Drop a Markdown file in and it is a page; drop a Lua file in and it is an endpoint. This cloudimg image ships the official upstream release binary on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, fetched from the project's own release and pinned by SHA-256, with the exact artifact and its digest recorded on the VM. Algernon runs under systemd as an unprivileged account, holding ports 80 and 443 through a single Linux capability rather than by running as root.

This is a web server that is actually serving something the moment it boots, not an empty directory index that reads as broken. The image ships a small default site, written by cloudimg, that demonstrates the two things Algernon exists for: the landing page is a Lua file executed on every request, and alongside it sits a Markdown document rendered to HTML when you ask for it and a status endpoint that computes its own response. A shipped self test proves the server is genuinely rendering rather than merely listening: it checks that a Markdown heading came back as a real HTML element and that the raw Markdown syntax did not, and that a Lua page returns a value summed in a loop plus a different answer for a different query, so a static file or an error page cannot satisfy it. Delete the default site once your own content is in place.

Secure by default. Algernon has no admin console, no login and no seeded account, so there is no default credential to leak, and its optional user system creates nothing until your own code asks it to. Server side Lua is real code execution, so the image closes that surface deliberately: the interactive prompt and debug mode are switched off, nothing is read from standard input, and the document root is owned by root and is deliberately not writable by the account the server runs as, because Algernon executes Lua files found there. systemd mounts the filesystem read only for the service except its data and log directories. The TLS certificate is generated on your VM at first boot, so the image contains no key material and no two instances ever share a private key, and the service cannot start until that bootstrap has run. The only listening ports are SSH and the two the product serves on.

Algernon is licensed under BSD-3-Clause, free and open source with no per user or per deployment fee, and is redistributed unmodified with its licence text retained on the image. cloudimg provides the packaging, the hardened configuration, the systemd integration, the working default site, the per instance TLS bootstrap, the self test tooling, security patching and 24/7 support with a guaranteed 24 hour response SLA. Algernon is an independent open source project and this image is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Algernon project.