A request for path `//` (also `///`, `/\`, ...) makes `new URL(req.url,
base)` throw ERR_INVALID_URL. serveStatic runs synchronously inside the
createServer callback, so the throw is an uncaught exception that kills
the process. Docker (`unless-stopped`) restarts it, and a client looping
on `//` crash-loops the journal — a trivial unauthenticated DoS. This
fired the "Container restart loop" Grafana alert in production (journal
restarted ~10x in 6 minutes).
Guard the URL parse with try/catch and fall through to the React Router
handler, which 404s malformed paths cleanly (the same way it already
handles scanner probes like /root/.ssh/id_rsa).
Extract serveStatic into its own module so it can be unit-tested without
booting the HTTP server, and add a regression test covering the
malformed-path cases. Widen the journal vitest include to discover
co-located tests for root-level server infra.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
