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"CGI assistance please"

Hi,

I am doing my nut slowly, I've managed to kind of get to grips with PHP scripts and using them on my website but I cannot seem to be able to use CGI scripts.

In my freeola space, what folder should I have besides the HTDOCS one? Is it cgi-bin or cgi-shl. If it is one of these, where should it be, in the same root as HTDOCS or somewhere else?

Also is it right permissions need to be set to 777 for the CGI-BIN/SHL folder?

The problem generally:

I have a cgi script. In fact every blinkin one I have tried, I have placed in the CGI-BIN and CGI-SHL folder and also in the HTDOCS folder, changed it's permissions to 777 but it won't work..what am I doing wrong?

Do I need to point to:

www.refrainingfrom.com/cgi-bin/blahblah.cgi
or
www.advertising.com/cgi-shl/blahblah.cgi
or
www.mywebsite.com/blahblah.cgi

Please help - very frustrated.
Steve

cjh wrote:
> Phone them or E-mail them requestion them to reset the cgi-shi folder, and they
> will hopefully set it up as it was intended to be. Then try your Scripts once
> again.

Thankyou cjh, I will email them again and ask them to reset the folder.

In that case Freeola have messed up and we can't really help you further! Sorry!

Phone them or E-mail them requestion them to reset the cgi-shi folder, and they will hopefully set it up as it was intended to be. Then try your Scripts once again.

Ok Turbo I can understand that there should be two folders by default: cgi-shl and htdocs which are on the same level. Do you think the trouble is I accidentally deleted my cgi-shl folder and recreated it?

This is the reply I had from Freeola support:

>"Perhaps if you hadn't renamed the cgi directory to cgi->shi and set the script permissions to execute it would >have worked. Now it gets a 500 error which means the >browser found the script but the script doesn't work."

The directory cgi-shl was renamed to cgi-shi following a reply in this thread as I thought that may be the fault. However it isn't.

This doesn't really answer my question that I posed to them, only reinforces what the problem is.

Steve

No no no no no....


You don't CREATE a cgi-shl folder, it's already there. It's not in htdocs either. Go into htdocs, and then move up a level. Now you should be in a directory with two folders: htdocs and..... cgi-shl!

Have fun.

rename it so it's a .cgi file, not a .pl and see if that works!!!
and put it in the cgi-shi Folder.

"And it still don't work, yet if I put that steve.pl in the htdocs folder it will work."


I made a slight mistake here, it doesn't work, it just brings up a windows dialog box asking do I want to open/save etc etc

Steve

I have tried the suggestions below and it still doesn't work. I have done the following:

Created a folder called cgi-shl in the same root as htdocs.
Made sure, treble checked that it is chmod777.

Put the code in a file as suggested by you Turbo and saved it into the cgi-shl folder and chmod it to 777.

Pointed to the file which is:
http://www.alienexistence.co.uk/cgi-bin/steve.pl

(I named mine steve.pl not foo.pl)

And it still don't work, yet if I put that steve.pl in the htdocs folder it will work.

Many thanks
Steve

Put the following in a file:

-----------------------------------------
#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Hello world";
-----------------------------------------

Save it as foo.pl in cgi-shl, CHMOD it to 777 (or +x if it will let you) and navigate to http://mywebspaceonfreeola/cgi-bin/foo.pl (obviously replacing your URL). See if that works.

It's not what you want to hear, but I got my first script to work first time at the weekend!

My PERL file was saved in cgi-shl (a directory at the same level as htdocs, not a subdirectory of it).

The file has permissions 777, and is run using www.mydomain.co.uk/cgi-bin/runfile.cgi.

I've found that Dreamweaver doesn't like Freeola too much, so I use SmartFTP to copy files around and set file permissions.

Hope this helps?