Getting Started

• 1. Create an authentication token
• 2. Get your user id
• 3. Get your backup config secret
• 4. Setup with Ansible
• 5. Setup using a Docker container with Ansible
• 6. Setup the programs manually with sc_pack

Tutorials

• 1. Setup with Ansible
• 2. Setup using Docker with Ansible
• 3. Setup with sc_pack
• 4. WooCommerce + ShimmerCat
• 5. Django + ShimmerCat
• 6. NodeJS + ShimmerCat
• 7. PHP + ShimmerCat
• 8. Magento + ShimmerCat
• 9. Magento in Apache or Nginx backend + ShimmerCat

How-to guides

• 1. Enable HTTP/2 push
• 2. Enable bot blocking
• 3. Adding a new deployment for an existing domain
• 4. Several ways of running your application
• 5. Onboarding website checks
• 6. Onboarding technical checks
• 7. Set and get Deployment metadata using the API
• 8. Certificates with Let’s Encrypt

Explanation

• 1. What is ShimmerCat Accelerator?
  • 1.1. Configuration overview
  • 1.2. Setup your own ShimmerCat Accelerator Network
• 2. Edge servers
  • 2.1. Load balancing
  • 2.2. Redundancy and specifications
• 3. Install sc_pack
  • 3.1. 1. Installation
    • 3.1.1. Download sc_pack
    • 3.1.2. How to run the installer?
  • 3.2. 2. Create deployment sites and domains
  • 3.3. 3. Directory hierarchy and configuration
    • 3.3.1. The configuration file
    • 3.3.2. Directory hierarchy
    • 3.3.3. Run the services
  • 3.4. 4. Deploy and setup sc_pack
• 4. Create deployment sites and domains
  • 4.1. Create deployments sites and domains
    • 4.1.1. Example using curl
• 5. Changelist agent
  • 5.1. Install the changelist agent
• 6. Kubernetes deployments
  • 6.1. 1. Single node deployment
    • 6.1.1. 0. Prerequisites
    • 6.1.2. 1. Preparing the inventory
    • 6.1.3. 2. Creating a Non-Root User on All Remote Servers
    • 6.1.4. 3. Setting Up the Master Node
  • 6.2. 2. Server network deployment (cluster)
    • 6.2.1. 0. Prerequisites
    • 6.2.2. 1. Preparing the inventory
    • 6.2.3. 2. Creating a Non-Root User on All Remote Servers
    • 6.2.4. 3. Installing Kubernetetes’ Dependencies
    • 6.2.5. 4. Setting Up the Master Node
    • 6.2.6. 5. Setting Up the Worker Nodes
    • 6.2.7. 6. Verifying the Cluster
• 7. Accelerator properties
  • 7.1. How to know if the Accelerator is working?
  • 7.2. How large proportion of visits are served with the Accelerator?
• 8. Opening ports on a firewall
• 9. Images in ShimmerCat Accelerator
  • 9.1. Prioritize and optimize (with no scaling)
  • 9.2. Prioritize and optimize with scaling
• 10. What is sc_pack?
  • 10.1. How everything runs
  • 10.2. Install sc_pack
• 11. Using sc_pack
  • 11.1. Siloed deployments under a single directory
  • 11.2. Starting the accelerator at boot time
  • 11.3. Miscellaneous utilities
    • 11.3.1. Using sc_pack to start and stop the processes
    • 11.3.2. Automatic updates of sc_pack
  • 11.4. Edit mode
  • 11.5. Enable a specific viewset
  • 11.6. Clone
  • 11.7. Version
  • 11.8. Known issues
• 12. Bot blocking
  • 12.1. Configuration
  • 12.2. Mark and unmark an IP address as bot
  • 12.3. Remove bots ip addresses
• 13. Certificates
  • 13.1. Generate and Renew certificates network-wide
    • 13.1.1. Using ShimmerCat API
    • 13.1.2. Using sc_pack
  • 13.2. Obtaining the CA root certificate
  • 13.3. Import certificates
    • 13.3.1. Examples
    • 13.3.2. Technical explanation of import_certificates
  • 13.4. Certificates in the origin server
• 14. Troubleshooting
  • 14.1. Running the sc_pack supervisord
    • 14.1.1. ShimmerCat permission denied error:
    • 14.1.2. Celery amqp.exceptions.AccessRefused
• 15. What is ShimmerCat QS?
  • 15.1. Server Architecture
    • 15.1.1. Runtime disposition
    • 15.1.2. Unix signals
    • 15.1.3. Filesystem access
    • 15.1.4. Cache architecture and changelists
  • 15.2. How ShimmerCat QS is tested
  • 15.3. Logging and Telemetry
  • 15.4. Distribution policy and open source
    • 15.4.1. Licensing terms
• 16. The re-write engine
  • 16.1. Core ShimmerCat URL convention
  • 16.2. Changing URLs
  • 16.3. Basic rule structure
    • 16.3.1. Rule processing sequence
  • 16.4. Using the URL path handling debugger
    • 16.4.1. Limitations of the debugger
  • 16.5. Re-write engine reference
    • 16.5.1. A brief note about the syntax of the syntax, and the lexical structure of the rules
    • 16.5.2. Regular expression syntax
    • 16.5.3. Top rule structure
    • 16.5.4. Pattern terminators
    • 16.5.5. Ending path program parts
    • 16.5.6. “Literal” pattern and program parts
    • 16.5.7. “Capture” pattern parts and substitution program parts
    • 16.5.8. Combining path program parts
    • 16.5.9. “Guarded capture” pattern
    • 16.5.10. Query string guards
  • 16.6. Creating redirects
  • 16.7. Handling dynamically generated static assets
  • 16.8. Forbidding pages
  • 16.9. The stop condition
  • 16.10. Query strings
• 17. About HTTP/2 Push
  • 17.1. Priorities on pushed streams
  • 17.2. How is it configured: push-lists and calm maps
  • 17.3. Works for all browsers
• 18. Calm maps
  • 18.1. Basics
  • 18.2. Calm maps for images
• 19. Fetch backends
  • 19.1. A brief note on terminology
  • 19.2. The http-fetch fetch backend
  • 19.3. The use-consultant fetch backend
• 20. Dynamic vs static assets
• 21. General
• 22. The Algorithm
• 23. The Changelist
• 24. About FUSE for recording the Changelist
• 25. Library snippets
  • 25.1. Python
  • 25.2. PHP
• 26. Views and devlove
  • 26.1. General structure of a view
    • 26.1.1. What do view files contain?
  • 26.2. Instructions in a view
    • 26.2.1. Changing again URL paths in views
    • 26.2.2. Deciding for a web backend
    • 26.2.3. Processing the request/response body
    • 26.2.4. Inserting the metrics snippet
    • 26.2.5. Stacked settings
• 27. Error pages for 404 and other status codes
  • 27.1. Error pages for electric domains
    • 27.1.1. Default settings
    • 27.1.2. Forwarding the error pages from the backends
  • 27.2. Error pages for API domains
• 28. Cache scripts
  • 28.1. Where .cache-script files go?
  • 28.2. What’s in .cache-script files?
• 29. Pull resources using HTTP/1.1
  • 29.1. The http-fetch fetch backend
  • 29.2. The use-consultant fetch backend
• 30. HTTPS and pooling
  • 30.1. HTTPS
  • 30.2. Pooling
• 31. Structuring your applications
  • 31.1. Two types of domains
    • 31.1.1. Electric domains serve views
    • 31.1.2. API domains
  • 31.2. How electric domains map URLs to filesystem paths
    • 31.2.1. How the mapping works in an example
    • 31.2.2. The rules of the convention
  • 31.3. Consulting
    • 31.3.1. Simple-consult:
    • 31.3.2. Files:
• 32. Handling application contents
  • 32.1. Brokering between two peers
  • 32.2. Sending contents verbatim from the backend
    • 32.2.1. Example 1: A very simple NodeJS application
    • 32.2.2. Streaming and buffering
  • 32.3. Using JSON data from the backend
    • 32.3.1. Example 2: Making your site SEO-friendly
    • 32.3.2. Micro-template syntax for use-json
  • 32.4. What else?
• 33. Processing and caching images: HAPs
  • 33.1. Enabling and disabling HAPs
  • 33.2. How ShimmerCat posts that an image needs to be optimized
  • 33.3. The Redis key that holds the records
  • 33.4. Adjustments
• 34. Easy net with SOCKS5
  • 34.1. Reasons for using an Internet-y hostname
  • 34.2. SOCKS5 to the rescue
  • 34.3. Forwarding connections: the “-w” option
  • 34.4. SOCKS5 in production: internal services
• 35. The Lua environment
  • 35.1. Available standard Lua libraries
  • 35.2. Regular expressions in Lua: regex module
  • 35.3. The urlparse module
  • 35.4. Debugging aids: trace and tprint
  • 35.5. Runtime of the Lua interpreter
• 36. Simulating network performance
  • 36.1. Why simulate bandwidth for web pages
  • 36.2. ShimmerCat allows you to simulate different network conditions
  • 36.3. Bandwidth and latency units
  • 36.4. Typical bandwidth and latency for different network conditions
    • 36.4.1. Residential wired connections
    • 36.4.2. WiFi, 3G and 4G
  • 36.5. Advantages and Limitations
  • 36.6. Alternatives
• 37. Connection management and DoS protections in ShimmerCat
  • 37.1. Connection handling and file-descriptor limits
    • 37.1.1. TL;DR overview
    • 37.1.2. The problem
  • 37.2. A bit of history on ShimmerCat connection management
  • 37.3. Connection handling from qs-2590 onwards
  • 37.4. Transient workers
  • 37.5. In-transit TLS handshakes
  • 37.6. Inactivity timeout in connections to backends
• 38. Certificates
  • 38.1. The start CA
  • 38.2. Certificate and private key format understood by ShimmerCat
  • 38.3. Example workflow for setting up TLS
    • 38.3.1. First few minutes: let ShimmerCat use the Start CA
    • 38.3.2. Next step: acquire a real certificate
  • 38.4. LetsEncrypt validation support
  • 38.5. Certificates in the origin server
• 39. ShimmerCat’s Logging
  • 39.1. Pragmatic logging
  • 39.2. Choosing what to log
    • 39.2.1. Logging everything
    • 39.2.2. Excluding a set
    • 39.2.3. Ranges of codes and set union
  • 39.3. Severity levels
  • 39.4. Logging for devops engineers
    • 39.4.1. Log messages go to queues in Redis
    • 39.4.2. Names of the logging queues
    • 39.4.3. Data in the logging queues
    • 39.4.4. Reading off the logs with Python
• 40. The scratch-folder
  • 40.1. Default location
  • 40.2. Contents of the scratch folder
    • 40.2.1. Certificates
    • 40.2.2. Assets cache
    • 40.2.3. Dynamic linker cache
    • 40.2.4. Redis files
    • 40.2.5. Read-only databases
• 41. General
• 42. How the JS snippet is inserted
• 43. Inserting the script
• 44. Performance
• 45. Configuration reference
  • 45.1. The devlove.yaml file
    • 45.1.1. Top objects
    • 45.1.2. Domains
    • 45.1.3. The root-dir
    • 45.1.4. The views-dir
    • 45.1.5. Consultant(s)
  • 45.2. Command Line Reference
    • 45.2.1. Command line options across modes
    • 45.2.2. General options
    • 45.2.3. Options for development

API Reference

• 1. Getting Started with the Customer API
• 2. Group Bot
• 3. How to clean the caches at your ShimmerCat Edges
• 4. Customer API for the accelerator

FAQ

• 1. FAQ
• 2. Troubleshooting