IT Tools on AWS User Guide

Overview

IT Tools is an open-source, self-hosted collection of around 80 handy online utilities for developers and people working in IT: token, UUID and hash generators, a JWT parser, encoders and decoders, format converters, a crontab helper, IPv4 and IPv6 subnet and network calculators, JSON and YAML tools and much more. Every tool runs entirely in your browser as a client-side Vue single-page app, so the data you paste in never leaves the page and there is no external database or service to run.

The cloudimg image serves the built IT Tools app with nginx on port 80, hardened and ready on first boot. Because IT Tools is designed as an open public utility with no authentication of its own, this image is secure by default: nginx gates the whole app behind per-instance HTTP Basic-Auth, and a unique password is generated on the first boot of every instance and written to a root-only file, so no two instances share a credential. A public, unauthenticated health endpoint is exposed at /health. Built from IT Tools v2024.10.22-7ca5933 (GPL-3.0), backed by 24/7 cloudimg support.

What is included:

• IT Tools v2024.10.22-7ca5933 static app, built from the official source and served from /var/www/it-tools
• nginx on :80 as the single public listener, gating the app behind per-instance HTTP Basic-Auth
• A public, unauthenticated health endpoint at /health
• A first-boot service that generates a unique admin password into a root-only 0600 file
• The unmodified upstream source archive at /usr/share/it-tools (GPL-3.0 corresponding source)
• nginx.service + it-tools-firstboot.service as systemd units, enabled on every boot
• 24/7 cloudimg support

Prerequisites

An AWS account, an EC2 key pair in the target region, and a VPC subnet. IT Tools serves static files and is light on resources; the recommended instance type is m5.large. Security group inbound: allow 22/tcp from your management network and 80/tcp for the tools. IT Tools serves plain HTTP on port 80; for production, terminate TLS in front of it with your own certificate or an Application Load Balancer, and restrict the security group to trusted source IP ranges.

Connecting to your instance

Connect over SSH on port 22 as the default login user for the OS variant you launched:

ssh ubuntu@<instance-public-ip>

Step 1 - Subscribe and launch from AWS Marketplace

Find the IT Tools listing by cloudimg on AWS Marketplace and choose Continue to Subscribe, then Continue to Configuration and Continue to Launch. Pick the Ubuntu 24.04 AMI version, an m5.large instance type, your VPC subnet and key pair, and a security group that allows 22/tcp (from your network) and 80/tcp. Launch the instance.

To launch from the AWS CLI instead, subscribe to the product in the console first, then:

aws ec2 run-instances \
  --image-id <it-tools-ami-id> \
  --instance-type m5.large \
  --key-name <your-key-pair> \
  --security-group-ids <sg-allowing-22-and-80> \
  --subnet-id <your-subnet> \
  --tag-specifications 'ResourceType=instance,Tags=[{Key=Name,Value=it-tools}]'

Step 2 - Confirm the service is running

IT Tools is served by nginx, and a one-shot first-boot service prepares the per-instance login. Confirm both, and that nginx is the only public listener:

systemctl is-active nginx.service it-tools-firstboot.service
ss -tln | grep ':80 '
test -f /var/lib/cloudimg/it-tools-firstboot.done && echo "first boot complete"

nginx.service and it-tools-firstboot.service both report active, nginx is listening on :80, and the sentinel confirms first boot finished:

active
active
LISTEN 0      511          0.0.0.0:80        0.0.0.0:*
LISTEN 0      511             [::]:80           [::]:*
first boot complete

Step 3 - Verify the authentication gate

IT Tools has no login of its own, so nginx gates the whole app behind HTTP Basic-Auth. The public /health endpoint returns 200 without credentials, the app returns 401 without credentials, and 200 with the per-instance login:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'health: %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/health
curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'unauth: %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/
sudo bash -c 'U=$(grep ^IT_TOOLS_USERNAME= /var/lib/cloudimg/it-tools-credentials.txt | cut -d= -f2-); P=$(grep ^IT_TOOLS_PASSWORD= /var/lib/cloudimg/it-tools-credentials.txt | cut -d= -f2-); curl -s -o /dev/null -w "auth: %{http_code}\n" -u "$U:$P" http://127.0.0.1/'

You see health: 200, unauth: 401 and auth: 200 - proof the app is reachable only with the per-instance credential:

health: 200
unauth: 401
auth: 200

Step 4 - Read your per-instance login

The unique per-instance credential (username admin) is written to a root-only file on first boot. Check its mode, then read it:

sudo stat -c 'file mode: %a  owner: %U:%G' /var/lib/cloudimg/it-tools-credentials.txt

file mode: 600  owner: root:root

Read the file with sudo cat /var/lib/cloudimg/it-tools-credentials.txt. Its contents look like this (your password is unique to your instance):

# IT-Tools 2024.10.22 on Ubuntu 24.04 (cloudimg AWS Marketplace image)
# Per-VM HTTP Basic-Auth credentials - UNIQUE to this instance, minted at first boot.

IT_TOOLS_URL=http://<instance-public-ip>/
IT_TOOLS_USERNAME=admin
IT_TOOLS_PASSWORD=<your-unique-password>

Step 5 - Open IT Tools

Browse to http://<instance-public-ip>/ in any modern browser. Your browser prompts for the HTTP Basic-Auth login: enter admin and the password from Step 4. IT Tools opens on its home page, showing every tool grouped by category (Crypto, Converter, Web, Network, Text, Data, Development and more) in a searchable grid.

Step 6 - Generate a token

Open Token generator from the Crypto group (or search for it at the top). Choose which character sets to include (uppercase, lowercase, numbers, symbols) and the length, and IT Tools generates a random token on the spot. Click Copy to put it on your clipboard. Everything is computed in your browser - no token ever leaves the page.

Step 7 - Hash text

Open Hash text from the Crypto group. Type or paste any text and IT Tools computes its MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-512 and other digests live as you type, with a selectable output encoding (hex, base64 and more). For example, hashing hello gives the SHA-256 digest 2cf24dba5fb0a30e26e83b2ac5b9e29e1b161e5c1fa7425e73043362938b9824 - the well-known value, computed entirely client-side.

Step 8 - Parse a JWT

Open JWT parser from the Web group. Paste a JSON Web Token and IT Tools decodes and displays its header and payload - the algorithm and type, and every claim (subject, name, issued-at and so on) - so you can inspect a token at a glance. Like every tool here, the decode happens entirely in your browser and the token is never sent anywhere.

Maintenance

• Data: IT Tools is client-side; every tool computes in your browser and nothing is stored server-side. There is no database to back up.
• Change the login: the per-instance password lives in the nginx htpasswd file. To set your own, run sudo htpasswd -B /etc/nginx/.it-tools-htpasswd admin and follow the prompts, then sudo systemctl reload nginx.
• Source code: the unmodified upstream source for this GPL-3.0 release ships on disk at /usr/share/it-tools/it-tools-v2024.10.22-7ca5933-source.tar.gz.
• TLS and network: IT Tools serves plain HTTP on port 80; terminate TLS in front of it with your own certificate or an Application Load Balancer, and restrict the security group to trusted source IP ranges, before production use.
• Restart: sudo systemctl restart nginx.service if you need to bounce the web server.
• Security patches: unattended-upgrades remains enabled so the OS continues to receive security updates automatically.

Support

cloudimg provides 24/7 expert support for this image. Contact support@cloudimg.co.uk.

IT Tools is open-source software released under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0). cloudimg is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the IT Tools project or its author. This image packages the open-source IT Tools software for convenient deployment on AWS. All trademarks are the property of their respective holders.