Re: html question

[nparker@cie-2.uoregon.edu (Neil Parker)]

In article <43vcu7$8dd@crl4.crl.com> joko@crl.com (Joe Kohn) writes:
>I'd like to add a counter to my home page, but my host doesn't have 
>a cgi-bin directory, and when I asked if they could please install 
>one, I got the usual reply that sysadmins like to give (and I'm sure you 
>can guess what that is).
>
>Is it possible for me to do it without a system wide cgi-bin directory, 
>or do I just have to wait until my sysadmin gets around to it? If it is 
>possible, does anyone already have all the compiled code for SunOS 4.1.3?

Whether or not it's possible depends heavily on what httpd server your system
is running, and on how it's been configured.

On my system, we're running NCSA httpd, which has an option that allows
CGI programs to go anywhere, instead of requiring all CGI programs to reside
in the magic cgi-bin directory.  System administrators may not want to turn
this option on, though, since a CGI program can introduce massive security
holes into a system...it's trivial, for example, to write a shell script
that accepts a line of text from an HTML form and executes it as a shell
command (in fact, it's astonishingly easy to write shell scripts that
outside users can subvert into executing arbitrary shell commands, even
when that's not what you intended).  Given the dangers of a badly or
maliciously-written CGI program, many sysadmins prefer to limit CGI
programs to a small set of known-to-be-relatively-secure programs.

If your system is running NCSA httpd, try to find out where they've hidden
the httpd configuration files ("/usr/local/etc/httpd/conf" is a common choice,
since that's what's configured into the source code by default).  If you
find it, look in the file "srm.conf".  If it contains this option:

     AddType application/x-httpd-cgi .cgi

with no comment indicator ("#") in front, then system-wide CGI's are
enabled, and you can put your own CGI programs in your own public_html
directory (as long as the program's name ends in ".cgi").


If system-wide CGI's are not enabled on your machine (i.e. the above line
is not present in srm.conf, or is present but commented out), then you'll
either have to keep pestering your sysadmin until the access-counting
program gets installed in cgi-bin, or run your own "rogue" httpd server
on a non-privileged port.

             - Neil Parker
-- 
Neil Parker, nparker@{cie-2,cie}.uoregon.edu, http://cie-2.uoregon.edu/~nparker

     "Evolution is vastly overrated."  -- Ambassador Delenn, _Babylon_5_