I wanted to find the absolute floor.

We know that abstractions cost resources, but I wanted to quantify exactly how much. So, I wrote a fully functional Gopher server in pure i386 assembly with zero dependencies—no libc, no runtime, just raw int 0x80 syscalls.

The result is GASM.

Whacky photo of gasm’s binary size

By manually managing the ELF headers, disabling page alignment, and using the legacy Linux socketcall interface, the final efficiency metrics are distinct:

• Binary Size: 1,512 bytes (static, stripped)
• RAM Usage: 24 KB (Verified RSS via pmap)
• Deps: None.

It serves Directory listings (Type 1), Text (Type 0), and Binary (Type 9). It implements bounds checking and traversal blocking manually, without the overhead of a standard library.

Because it targets the original i386 instruction set, it runs natively on everything from a 1985 386DX to a modern Ryzen 9.

It is not a replacement for Nginx. It is a study in how much computer you actually need to serve a file.

The source is available for audit.

Source Code and Download (GitHub)

Original content in gopherspace: gopher://gopher.someodd.zip:70/1/phlog/gasm-tiny-gopher-runs-on-trash.gopher.txt