CGI not working.

[Keystone]

Hello, I'm a bit of a novice to this so bare with me if this is a simple one...

I purchased Zoom V6 Pro and installed it on my machine at home. Indexing was easy. My inital upload of the site is only about 1000 pages (but will grow to about 38,000-42,000 after the databases are comeplete.

I let Zoom upload the files. It was FTP'd as Binary. But I don't seem to be able to get the CGI to work.

Host is Linux, CGI is supported (there are also preloaded CGI's offered by the hosting co). The host permits CGI to run in any folder but recommends the CGI-BIN. and perms are set to 755.

I checked the host's help files and this is what I found when searching for CGI issues:

Make sure when you upload the CGI file DO NOT upload in binary mode, instead use ASCII mode. Uploading in binary will cause the server not to recognize the scripts as executables. Most FTP clients will upload .pl or .cgi files in binary mode by default so you will need to change this. You will need to upload the scripts into your cgi-bin directory for security reasons, however they will execute from anywhere within your account.

The last step is to set the file permissions. This is otherwise known as chmoding and can be done from most FTP clients (select file then right click for popupmenu). Make sure you CHMOD your scripts to "755" otherwise you will get errors.

They are saying only upload as ASCII, you are saying only upload as Binary.

I also found this in their help files:

What are the basics of installing CGI & Perl scripts?
1) Be sure the file permissions are set correctly on the cgi that you are trying to run start with 755.
2) Always upload and download a cgi in ASCII transfer mode.

I have also tried the files in different locations including the CGI-BIN, it acts like it wants me to download the file...

Any newbie advice?

Thanks!

[David]

Make sure when you upload the CGI file DO NOT upload in binary mode, instead use ASCII mode

This is bad advice from your host and shows that they don't really know what CGI is. You MUST do the exact opposite in this case and upload in binary mode.

See also this FAQ for CGI installation troubleshooting.

[Ray]

From the sound of that, they may well also have the common misconception that all CGI files are Perl scripts (which is not true).

The server may possibly be configured to only run Perl scripts and not have proper CGI support enabled, despite them claiming otherwise. This is all covered in the FAQ page linked above, but keep an eye out for symptoms indicating if this is the case (see the FAQ regarding "Premature end of script headers", etc.)

[Keystone]

CGI Support

I believe that is correct. As I said in the first post I did upload in Binary but the file still does not work so I am going on the assumption that they are not really supporting CGI. I looked at their preloaded apps listed under CGI and they are -NOT- CGI. The apps are pl and believe it or not... php! This is somewhat less than impressive. They've been very good on all other things and seem to go the extra mile to help so I'll see if we can work this issue out.

Until we do I have uploaded a PHP version of the search, which I've tested and does work. This will hold me off for a while but I'll be pushing them to give proper CGI support.

Thank you!