Scripting Questions

1. What is CGI access?

CGI scripts (Common Gateway interface) are used to provide things like counters, form responses, guest books, and many other things. AAIServ gives you full CGI access for no extra charge. You can write your own scripts, install someone else's, or use one of our preinstalled CGI scripts.

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2. What is my absolute path?

The absolute path to your user directory is

/home/yourusername

Some scripts may require further path information to their installation directory under your home directory:

/home/yourusername/public_html/directory

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3. What is the path to perl?

Either of the following paths are valid:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
#!/usr/bin/perl

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4. What is the path to sendmail?

The following path is valid:
/usr/sbin/sendmail

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5. Troubleshooting CGI scripts

One of the most common errors when working with CGI scripts is the "500 - Internal Server Error" message. This can be for any number of reasons, the most common of which are outlined below.

Problem: Path to perl is incorrect.
Solution: Set the path correctly. For our systems, either of the following will work.
#!/usr/bin/perl
#!/usr/local/bin/perl

Problem: Permissions on the script are incorrect.
Solution: Set the script permissions to 755. Supporting data files may need different permissions, depending on the script; please check the documentation for the script for how permissions should be set for these files.

Problem: Directory where the script resides is world-writeable.
Solution: Change the permissions on the directory to 755 (rwxr-xr-x). This includes the /public_html directory for your account, no matter what any script's installation instructions might indicate (that is, do not set your /public_html to 777).
Problem: The script tries to write data to a file, but generates a "permissions denied" error.
Solution: Check the settings of the destination file or directory. In general, setting the permissions to 644 (rw-r--r) will be sufficient for most scripts. Check the documentation for the script to verify how the permissions should be set.

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