CGI

CGI bin Applications

CGI stands for "Common Gateway Inferface," a fancy name meaning computer programs running on the

webserver that can be invoked from a www page at the browser. The "bin" part alludes to the binary

executables that result from compiled or assembled programs. It is a bit misleading because cgi s can also be

Unix shell scripts or interpreted languages like Perl. CGI scripts need to be saved in ASCII format and

uploaded to your server s cgi bin in ASCII or text format. This is very important.

We don t provide free support for CGI scripts which we did not install on your server. So if you are not

already familiar with CGI scripting, you may want to read a book on the subject or find places on the Internet

with CGI scripting information. There are many good resources for CGI scripts found on the web. The scripts

at 

Matt s Script Archive

 found at http://www.worldwidemart.com/scripts/ are very good. Many of our scripts

come from here. Another excellent resource is 

The CGI Resource Index

 found at http://www.cgi perl.com/   

if you are not an expert, look for scripts that are very well documented and come with step by step

instructions, or contact us for help or installation.

Where to Put CGI bin Scripts

Put your cgi bin scripts in the www subdirectory named "cgi bin". If you have given full POP/FTP/Telnet

accounts to other people, each of them will have their own separate cgi bin inside the main cgi bin. When

they login with their username and password, they will only have access to their own cgi bin.

Paths to Date, Mail, Perl, etc.

Here are your paths to the common server resources that CGI scripts often require:

Sendmail:

/usr/sbin/sendmail

Perl5.003:

/usr/bin/perl

Perl5.004:

/usr/bin/perl5.004

Date:

/bin/date

Java:

/usr/local/java/bin/java

Python:

/usr/bin/python

Domain path:

/www/yourdomain

(puts you in your web directory)

Cgi bin path:

/www/yourdomain/cgi bin

(puts you in your cgi bin)

Look at the window in your FTP or Telnet client to see whether your site resides on /home/ or /home2/.

Setting Permissions

The following is a simple explanation of file permissions in Unix. To list the access permissions of a file or

directory, telnet to your server, then:

cd directoryname

to change the directory until you are either in the directory above the file you are interested in, or above the

directory you are checking.