publicly

Authenticate publicly, chat privately.

Publicly is a lean, invite only chat server over SSH connections.

Quickstart

Install publicly either by downloading a release or building from source.

cargo install --git https://github.com/lavafroth/publicly

Generate a keypair for the administrator.

ssh-keygen -f op -C "op:admin" -t ed25519 -N ""
mv op.pub Authfile

Deploy.

publicly

This binds to port 2222 on all interfaces. Members with the respective private keys can join like so:

ssh 0.0.0.0 -p 2222 -oStrictHostKeyChecking=No -i op

Here, the private key file is named op.

Roadmap

• SSH authentication and authorization
• Emacs-like shortcuts for textarea
• multiline support with Alt Return
• Adjustable parameters:
  • history size
  • Authfile path
  • Listening port number
• /add command to add new keys
• /reload command to reload the Authfile
• /rename command
• /commit command to commit in-memory changes to Authfile
• #mention tags

Authfile

The Authfile is the source of truth.

Keys can be added via the chat interface with the /add command but they won't persist over multiple runs of the server unless they are committed using the /commit command.

Consider the keys in the example Authfile

ssh-ed25519 AAAA... bob@work
ssh-ed25519 AAAA... h@cafe:admin

The Authfile intentionally uses the same format as the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file, with the only difference being that it parses the last field, the comment, to assign usernames.

For example, the first key has a comment bob@work which will be the username assigned to anyone joining with the respective key. Further, bob@work can join only with normal privileges.

h@cafe, whose comment is tagged as :admin will be able to join the chat with admin privileges.

Note

Usernames may only contain ASCII alphanumeric characters and the symbols @-_.. All other characters will be stripped.