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CGI is short for "Common Gateway Interface", a protocol which allows programs
which are run on a web server to communicate with visitors' browsers.
CGI programs allow you to make your site more dynamic and interactive by including
such features as counters, guest books and discussion boards.
Most CGI programs are written in a language called Perl,
but CGI programs can in theory be written in any programming language.
The Efficient Hosting servers support CGI scripts written in Perl, Python, C, PHP
and the common Linux shells.
For more information about CGI and Perl, or to view archives of third party CGI
scripts, you may follow the links to suggested CGI resources below.
The version of Perl currently installed on our servers is Version 5.006. |
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Your personal "cgi-bin" folder is public_html/cgi-bin. We recommend that
you place all your CGI scripts in this folder as it offers additional security,
but they may be installed in any other folder if you find this more convenient.
Most CGI scripts (eg Perl scripts) are in the form of a text file and should be
uploaded as "ASCII Text" file type, not as Binary or Raw file type. But
it is also possible to have compiled CGI scripts which should instead be
uploaded as Binary. If in doubt, please consult the script author's own documentation.
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After uploading, the file permissions for any CGI scripts should be set to 755,
in order to make them executable.
For many CGI scripts it is also important that the permissions are set correctly
for any files or folders which they need to access. For example, if a CGI script
needs to write to a log file, then this log file will need to have write access
enabled and the folder where it is located will need to give "execute" permission.
If a CGI script needs to create, delete or rename files, then it will
need "write" permission for the folder in which this is to be done.
For third party scripts, the documentation provided by the author usually gives
specific details of the permissions required. For instance, the instructions may
direct you to "chmod 755" a file.
The three digits after a chmod command (eg "chmod 755") refer to the values
to be assigned to the owner, to the group, and to all others
respectively.
Each number represents the sum of the values assigned for Read, Write, and Execute
permission:
Read - 4
Write - 2
Execute - 1
Adding the numbers for each of the three permission groups gives you the setting.
In our example, the owner is granted read, write and execute permission
(7=4+2+1), whilst both the group and others are granted read and
execute permission (5=4+1).
The read, write and execute permission settings have different meanings for
folders than they do for files.
For a folder:
Read permission is required in order to list the files it contains.
Write permission is required in order to create, delete or rename files within it.
Execute permission is required in order to open files within it for reading and/or writing.
File permissions can be modified by most popular FTP programs,
including WS_FTP and CuteFTP.
You can also check and update file permissions using the File Manager
within your Control Panel. The permissions
are displayed alongside all files and folders and can be changed by first clicking
on the appropriate file name and then clicking "Change Permissions".
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/home/username/public_html/cgi-bin |
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http://www.yourdomain.co.uk/cgi-bin |
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http://www.yourdomain.co.uk/cgi-sys |
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/usr/sbin/sendmail |
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/usr/local/bin/perl |
| | (For convenience, /usr/bin/perl may also be used, so all Perl scripts should start either with the line #!/usr/local/bin/perl or with the line #!/usr/bin/perl) |
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If your script doesn't work, please make sure that the Permissions
are set right for both the scripts themselves, and any files or folders they need
to access.
It is also worth double checking that all Paths are set correctly,
and that all CGI scripts were uploaded as the correct
File Type (usually "ASCII Text").
Another common problem is an output format error. Any output from a CGI program
intended for a visitor's browser must be preceded by a valid "HTTP header". For
example, if you are generating an HTML page, the first print statement that your
program executes must be: print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
Also, it is best to ensure that the very last line of a CGI script has a newline
at the end. If not, it may not get processed when you run the script.
It can be a good idea to check your CGI scripts for syntax errors before uploading
them to your site. To do this, you will need to download Perl from
www.perl.com
and install it on your local machine.
You can then type perl -c your_program.cgi in a DOS box
to check your program for syntax errors.
You may also be able to learn more about why a CGI script is failing to work correctly
by checking the Error Log in the
Web Statistics section of your
Control Panel.
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Not only are you free to install your own or third party CGI scripts, we
have also made a large number of pre-installed scripts
available to you, including the following:
Some of these scripts are always available in the global "CGI-Bin" folder (/cgi-sys).
This is a shared folder which allows the same CGI files to be made available to all of our users.
Other scripts need to be set up before use and this can be easily done from within the
CGI Script Centre in your Control Panel.
For more information on the various pre-installed scripts, please refer to the
Pre-installed Scripts section of our
Control Panel documentation. |
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Customer Support Centre : Manual : CGI And Perl
