[Answered] Cgi Program Downloads

[chuck]

I have a strange problem with a CGI program written in Perl on Johnny. I have a report from a user that when they invoke the script or hit one of the buttons it creates (which re-runs the script) that sometimes the code downloads instead of running the script. The script is in my /scgi-bin folder, and has a .cgi extension. It runs normally (most of the time) on Windows using Internet Explorer 8 or 11 (what I have). One of my testers was running Chrome on a MacBook and got the strange behavior. The thing is, I didn't know that the browser or operating system could even do this. I'd expect that the server would always run the program or download it when it receives a request for that URL.

 

By the way, the "most of the time" seems to be another glitch that I can't explain. Sometimes when I try to invoke the script it gives me a bit of garbage text instead of the form I expected. Generally hitting refresh will clear this.

 

Any help with either of these behaviors would be appreciated.

[Ice IT Support]

Could you post the URL to your script please?

 

From http://heliohost.org/home/features/languages/perl :

Perl scripts are easy to configure and run. Just create a file in your cgi-bin directory under public_html, and place the Perl "shebang" line (#!/usr/bin/perl) on the first line of the file. Below this line you may write Perl code. Make sure you make this file's CHMOD permissions 755, and output a Content-type header before anything else.

[chuck]

You can use http://chuck.heliohost.org/scgi-bin/nph-TeamRegistration.cgi?start=admin;affiliate=999 to run the program. For testing, you can use admin as the user name and test as the password. There's no data in the database, but you can push a few buttons and navigate to a few different pages.

 

This is an upgrade to a program I have been working on for a few years now and had hosted on another site last year.

[Byron]

The first time I clicked onto your link with Chrome, I got the download screen but after that it gave me the page each time. I thought it might have something to do with the way you append your url with the semicolon (?start=admin;affiliate=999) so I added a few more semicolons to the url and got the download screen again. Can you append the url without the semicolon? Maybe like this: ?start=admin&affiliate=999

[chuck]

That seems to work OK for me. I'll ask my other tester to give it a try.

 

Any ideas on the garbage output that I get now and again? It often happens the first time I try to run a site, but sometimes when I push a button. The output reminds me of what we used to get in the old days with a noisy modem line. I can't make it happen on demand, though.

[Byron]

Any ideas on the garbage output that I get now and again? It often happens the first time I try to run a site, but sometimes when I push a button. The output reminds me of what we used to get in the old days with a noisy modem line. I can't make it happen on demand, though.

 

I have know idea what that could be.