What is cgi-bin in site server?
Find out What the cgi-bin folder in site server is.
i. Here are the key steps to run CGI scripts on your site's server:
1. Ensure your web server supports CGI and has CGI enabled. Popular web servers like Apache, Nginx, and IIS can all handle CGI if properly configured.
2. Save your CGI scripts with a `.cgi` or `.pl` extension in the designated CGI directory path. The common location is `/usr/lib/cgi-bin` but can vary based on server setup.
3. Set the file permissions correctly on your CGI scripts to make them executable. Usually 755 permissions should work.
4. Configure your web server to handle requests for CGI files and process them. For example in Apache you need to add `Options +ExecCGI` to your config files.
5. Test your CGI scripts by sending well-formed URL requests from your browser to your web server. For instance `http://yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/script.cgi`.
6. Check the HTTP response codes and content to confirm your scripts are executing on the server properly.
7. If needed, look at your server access and error logs to troubleshoot any CGI issues stopping them from running correctly.
ii. Here are some of the main pros and cons of using CGI scripts on your website's server:
Pros:
- Platform independent - CGI scripts work on any web server and with many programming languages like Perl, C/C++, JavaScript etc. This provides flexibility.
- Supported widely - CGI is a long established standard, web servers have well developed CGI handling processes so easier to get up and running.
- Integrates dynamic processing - Useful for functions like taking user inputs, loading databases, server-side processing etc before serving pages.
- Cost efficient - CGI hosting plans are affordable for small to medium traffic sites to run such processing tasks.
Cons:
- Performance overheads - Spawning new processes for every request places heavier load, may throttle with higher traffic.
- Security risks - Risk of exploits through scripts so they need proper hardening and validation logic.
- No persistent memory - CGI processes initiate and tear down per script execution stopping caching benefits.
- Debugging challenges - More components and layers adds complexity for resolving issues. Logging helps.
In summary, CGI provides a simpler way to enable server-side processing but has scalability and security limits. Alternatives like FastCGI improve on some of these areas.
iii. Here are the steps to enable CGI scripts outside of the default cgi-bin directory on most common web servers:
Apache:
1. Edit your httpd.conf file and add the Directive ScriptAliasMatch to define a custom location to allow CGI scripts from. For example:
ScriptAliasMatch ^/mycgis/(.*) /path/to/mycgis/$1
2. Ensure you have Options +ExecCGI enabled for this directory and that permissions are set correctly.
3. Restart the apache service. Scripts placed in /path/to/mycgis will now execute.
Nginx:
1. In your nginx.conf file, under the location block define the parameter fastcgi_pass to map to your custom script directory path.
location ~ \.cgi$ {
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /path/to/mycgis$fastcgi_script_name;
}
2. Set the listen parameter for your upstream FastCGI server to handle the requests.
3. Save changes and restart Nginx to apply the new CGI directory configuration.
For other web servers, the principles are similar - using aliasing, script mapping and executables directives to allow CGI execution rights from non-standard locations.