Influxdb: Add human-readable output for "GET /"

[mark-rushakoff]

Over time, I've seen many reports from users about receiving a 404 error when they curl or use their browser to open http://localhost:8086. Here's some community posts about it:

https://community.influxdata.com/t/404-page-not-found/4249
https://community.influxdata.com/t/localhost-8086-shows-404-page-not-found-how-do-i-see-the-gui/2364
https://community.influxdata.com/t/unable-to-browse-through-influx-db-after-setting-it-up-on-windows-nor-linux-machine/4768

And a couple github issues:
https://github.com/influxdata/influxdb/issues/436
https://github.com/influxdata/influxdb/issues/9668

We could eliminate some confusion if we emitted a simple HTML page that offered a brief usage explanation and included links to relevant docs pages.

[ryuhhnn]

What about simply returning text that states the status of the server? Adding in an HTML page (while trivial) might overly complicate things, when a simply "InfluxDB is running" message would suffice.

[mark-rushakoff]

Plain text would probably be fine. Something like

InfluxDB is running!

You've connected to the API port. Check out the getting started guide:
https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/latest/introduction/getting-started/

It's not a big deal to me if a user has to copy and paste that link since it's plain text and not HTML. Probably still need to get the okay from product on this slight usability change.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[nogweii]

Teaching my coworkers that a 404 is OK, in this specific instance, is still a hurdle for some of them. It'd be easier if the index page returned something, even a blank 200 page. Even better to include a message like the above.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.