Running CGI Applications on www.fiu.edu

Users are now able to run cgi applications out of their unix home directories. In this implementation, the executing program runs under the ownership of the program owner, rather than the httpd owner.
CGI scripting is recommended only for advanced HTML users who have some programming experience. CGI scripts can be written in any language that can be run under Solaris 2.5. Source code must be compiled on one of the Solaris-based unix compute servers (serss1, solix, xlab1).

To create your own CGI programs, you must:

• Create a subdirectory called cgi-bin directly under www. Any programs to be executed from your Web pages should be placed there.

• Set the permissions of the cgi-bin directory to world execute
  (chmod a+x ~/www/cgi-bin)

• Set the permissions for all scripts in the cgi-bin directory to owner read/write/execute. Permissions for other users will not be required.
  chmod 700 ~/www/cgi-bin/filename

• The program must either end in the extensions .cgi or .pl (generally used for perl scripts).

• To run your program, you need to set a link that invokes your script. The link should be of the form:

  http://cgi.fiu.edu/~username/cgi-bin/scriptname

  where [username] is your FIU username and [scriptname] is the name of the program in your www/cgi-bin directory.

  For example, if you are jdoe01, you might set up program named get-form.pl with the action URL:

  <form method="POST" action="http://cgi.fiu.edu/~jdoe01/cgi-bin/get-form.pl">

The perl path should be listed as:

#!/home/sol2/bin/perl

The path for sending email via the command line is:

/usr/local/bin/ucbmail

When testing, you should be able to run the script from the command line on solix.

The following requirements are made on all cgi scripts written at FIU:

1. The command that the request wishes to execute must not contain a /.
2. The current working directory must be a directory.
3. The current working directory must not be writable by group or other.
4. The command being executed cannot be a symbolic link.
5. The command being executed cannot be writable by group or other.
6. The command being executed cannot be a setuid or setgid program.
7. The target UID and GID must be a valid user and group on this system.
8. The target UID and GID to execute as, must match the UID and GID of the directory.
9. The target execution UID and GID must not be the privledged ID 0.

Note: Users who wish to create on line forms or other CGI applications will still need to understand form development and CGI programming. W3C provides additional information about CGI.
Yahoo also provides good links.
Application developers should also pay attention to security issues.
Please do not contact the webmaster to help debug your programs.

Can I use Server-Side Includes?

No.

Can I use FrontPage Extensions?

No.

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