Advanced User's Section Return to Main
Index
CGI Script Resources There are many good
resources for CGI scripts found on the web. The scripts at Matt's Script
Archive found at http://www.worldwidemart.com/scripts are very good. Many of our scripts come from there. Another
excellent resource is The CGI Resource Index found at
http://www.cgi-perl.com/ Unless you are an expert on the
subject, you should look for scripts that are very well documented and
come with step-by-step instructions. You may contact us for help
or installation if you like.
Paths to
Date, Mail, Perl, etc.(Advanced
Users) CGI scripts often require
paths to common server resources. These paths are as
follows: (puts you in your web directory)
(puts you in your cgi-bin) Sendmail: /usr/sbin/sendmail
Perl5.003:
/usr/bin/perl Perl5.004: /usr/bin/perl5.004 (Full
5.004 lib support not available currently) Date: /bin/date Java: /usr/bin/java Python: /usr/bin/python Domain path: /www/yourdomain Cgi-bin path:
/www/yourdomain/cgi-bin
Return to Main
Index
Go To Top of Page
Setting Permissions(Advanced
Users) The following is a simple
explanation of file permissions in Unix. To list the access permissions
of a file or directory, telnet to your server, then type:
cd directoryname
to change the directory until you are either in the
directory above the file you are interested in, or above the directory
you are checking. Type: ls -l
filename and you will see what the
current permission settings are for that file, along with other
information.
Examples of
using chmod:
PEOPLE |
PERMISSIONS |
u = the file's user (you) |
r = read access |
g = the file's group |
x = execute access |
o = others |
w = write access |
a = the user, the group, and others |
|
To change permissions for a file named
filename.cgi, you need to chmod the file (change mode). For
example, when you type this:
chmod u=rwx,g=rx,o=rx filename.cgi you've
given: read, execute,
and write access to the user (that's you) read and execute access to the group
and read and execute
access to others
Some scripts will tell you to chmod 775 (for
example). Doing the above is the same thing as typing chmod 775. You can
use either method with our Unix servers. Let me explain:
When using the numeric system, the code for
permissions is as follows: r = 4 w = 2 x = 1 rwx = 7 The first 7 of our chmod775 tells Unix to change the user's
permissions to rxw (because r=4 + w=2 + x=1 adds up to 7. The second 7
applies to the group, and the last number 5, refers to others
(4+1=5).
When doing an ls -l on the file, telnet always
shows the permissions this way: -rwxr-xr-x Ignore the first dash, then break up the above into three
groups of letters. If there's a dash where a letter should be, it
means that there is no permission for those people. Remember: the first 3 apply to user, the second 3 apply
to group, and the third 3 apply to
others.
Return to Main
Index
Go To Top of Page
Change Permissions with Fetch Some FTP clients support changing permissions in a more
graphical way. If you have Fetch for the Mac, you have an easy way to
change permissions.
-
- FTP into your account on the server.
- Go to the file you want to change the permissions on,
and highlight it.
- Under the Remote menu, select Change
Permissions.
- A window will pop up showing the current permissions
for the file you highlighted. Click on the boxes to change
permissions as needed.
Return to Main
Index
Go To Top of Page
Change Permissions with WS_FTP WS_FTP also makes changing permissions
simple.
-
- FTP into your account on the server
- Highlight the file you want to check permissions on
and reight-click it.
- A menu will pop up. Select CHMOD
- You will see a
- Just highlight the file you want to check, and
right-click on it. A
- menu will pop up, then select
CHMOD.
- You will see the window listing applicable
permissions. Check the ones you want.
Return to Main
Index
Go To Top of Page
CGI Troubleshooting Q & A (Advanced
Users) Here are the solutions
to some of the more common CGI script problems, in question and answer
format. You will find a list of proper permission settings for the
scripts we provide at the end.
Question: When I activate my
CGI program, I get back a page that says "Internal Server Error. The
server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable
to complete your request."
Answer: This is
generally caused by a problem within the script. You will need to login
via Telnet and test your script in local mode to get a better idea of
what the problem is. You will need to first get into the directory in
which your script is located, then execute the script. You can execute
the script in either of two ways:
1) Type "perl myscript.pl" (Perl being the language
interpreter in this case). Or
2) Simply type "myscript.pl" alone, that will
work if the first line is well written to indicate the location of
Perl.
The first one is useful to see if there's any
error IN your script. The second one is useful to test if your
"calling line" (the first line of the script) is okay, i.e. if you
entered the right location of Perl.
Question: I am being getting a "File Not Found," or
"No Such File or Directory." error. Answer: Upload your Perl or CGI script in
ASCII mode, not binary mode.
Question: When I test my Perl
script in local mode (by Telnet), I have the following error: "Literal
@domain now requires backslash at myscript.pl line 3, within
string. Execution of myscript.pl aborted due to compilation
errors." Answer: This
is caused by a misinterpretation by Perl., The "@" sign has a
special meaning in Perl; it identifies an array (a table of elements).
Since it cannot find the array named domain, it generates an error. You
should place a backslash (\) before the "@" symbol to tell Perl to
see it as a regular symbol, as in an email address.
Question: I am getting the
message "POST not implemented." Answer: You are probably using the
wrong reference for cgiemail. Use the reference
/cgi-bin/cgiemail/mail.txt. Another possibility is that you are
pointing to a cgi-bin script that you have not put in your cgi-bin
directory. In general, this message really means that the web server is
not recognizing the cgi-bin script you are calling as a program. It
thinks it is a regular text file.
Question: It's saying I don't
have permission to access IMPORTANT: CGI
scripts MUST be uploaded/downloaded in ASCII format. They must
also be saved in ASCII (text or .txt) format. This is very important.
Failure to follow these guidelines will result in an inoperable
program.
Question: It's saying I
don't have permission to access Answer: This error message means that
you are missing your index.htm file. Note that files that start with a
"." are hidden files. To see them, type ls -al. If you wish to FTP this
file in, go to the home/yourdomain directory.
Return to Main
Index
Go To Top of Page
Miva Empresa (Advanced Users)
Miva makes building dynamic, data driven web pages as
easy as HTML. You can quickly develop interactive web pages that are
100% browser independent. Miva runs on the web server, interprets the
Miva tags and outputs pure HTML to the browser. You can also use Miva to
output Javascript and other browser languages, and use the built-in
database to easily manipulate and publish data.
Full documentation and usage support for HTML
Script can be found at: http://htmlscript.com/.
Miva offers a variety of features. You should visit
their site for more information. We are running
version 3.0 of HTML Script. The following is what you will need to know
for use on your domain.
- The script being called is "miva", which is in
your cgi-bin.
- The active pages (pages with .hts or .mv) need to be
placed in your root www directory, not in
subdirectories.
- A sample URL call for this would be as
follows: http://yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/miva?yourpage.mv
HTMLSCRIPT has a variety of pre configured products that
require path information we have
preconfigured miva to automatically look into the /home/domain/htsdata
directory for data files. If data is placed in this directory an
example call would be as follows: <export file="file.dat">
To call HTML script thru the secure server use
the following:
https://vault.safe-ssl.net/cgi-bin/smiva?yourdomain/yourpage.mv
machine should be replaced with the name
of the system your on, ie pan, artemis, osirus, ect . . .
Return to Main
Index
Go To Top of Page
More On The Miva Engine. The Miva Engine makes building dynamic web sites as easy
as writing HTML. Quickly develop server and browser independent dynamic
sites using the XML standard. Dynamic sites that integrate scripting,
database, and commerce can be developed and tested on a Microsoft
workstation and deployed on Microsoft or Unix servers.
SUPPORTED
STANDARDS
HTML |
SGML |
XML |
HTTP |
POP3 |
SMTP |
ISAPI |
CGI |
NSAPI |
UNIX |
WINDOWS |
JAVA |
ODBC |
xBASE |
APACHE |
JAVASCRIPT |
Miva runs as a pre-processor on the web server,
interprets the Miva tags and outputs standard HTML, XML,
Javascript, and other user interface code to the browser. Use the
built-in database and ODBC interfaces to easily manipulate and
publish data. Anyone that knows HTML can use Miva.
Return to Main
Index
Go To Top of Page
Miva (Htmlscript 3.0) tags are XML compliant and include:
<MvEVALUATE>, <MvIF>,
<MvELSE>, <MvWHILE>, <MvEXPORT>, <MvIMPORT>,
<MvCOMMERCE>, <MvLET>, <MvASSIGN>, <MvCALL>,
<MvHIDE>, <MvEXIT>, <MvCOMMENT>,
<MvFUNCTION>, <MvMAIL>, <MvOPEN>, <MvCLOSE>,
<MvFIND>, <MvSKIP>, <MvGO>, <MvADD>,
<MvUPDATE>, <MvDELETE>, <MvUNDELETE>,
<MvMAKEINDEX>, <MvSETINDEX>, <MvREINDEX>,
<MvPACK>, <MvPRIMARY>, <MIVA>
Return to Main
Index
Go To Top of Page
PlusMail Web Control PlusMail has an
advanced web control panel which allows you to control all aspects of
your web presence from a web browser. Access
for use: http://yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/plusmail
NOTE: Due to the unique security requirement of
the administration system you must have you browser set to allow
cookies. This in conjunction with a number of hidden verification
systems assures you are the only user allowed to access these features
on your domain.
Return to Main
Index
Go To Top of Page
FTP Miallists Use the folloiwng
instructions to setup simple maillists and subscribable maillists using
FTP. Recommended for Advanced Users
only.
FTP Simple Maillists To setup a
maillist first create a simple text file. Enter one address per
line.
Example list add1@email1.com
add2@email2.com add3@email3.com
You can put up to 1000 names in the list. Once you are done
creating the list you go to your home directory and put the list
in the subdirectory maillists. The list may be named anything
you like, its important there’s no extension on the end.
Example: clients (good
name) clients.txt (no
good)
To use the list you just need to mail to the name of the list.
using the above example with a domain name of fred.com, to
email the list you would send to clients@fred.com. its that
simple. Note if your maillist is
named clients it cannot be used in the infobots directory or
the .redirect file.
Return to Main
Index
Go To Top of Page
FTP Subscribable Maillists You can
setup your maillist so your customers can subscribe to it via email.
There is a limit of 1,000 subscribers per list and you cannot send
email to the list larger than 75k. Here are the instructions for
setting up this list: 1. Set up a
welcome message in the infobot directory -- you can name it anything
you like, but for our example we'll call it Welcome. The text
file could say: "Welcome to our Maillist.
You are now subscribed to our list. This
message will be automatically returned to the sender each time someone
subscribes.
2. Now you need to set up a
configuration file to tell the mail system to build a mailing list. In
your infobot directory create a file called infolist. This is
used to tell the system what to do with addresses received from each
infobot response. You can have as many lists as you want. But in
keeping with the list example above, we will call it mlist. Here's
what the file should look like: welcome mlist
The first line should have a space between the two
names and be uploaded in ASCII format, not
binary.
Return to Main
Index
Go To Top of Page
FTP Multiples Lists You can have
multiple lists, such as mlist1, mlist2, etc., but you should only have
one configuration file. It must be called infolist. To handle all
three examples, you'd make the infolist file look like this,
with each listserver on its own line, with no
blank lines in-between:
welcome mlist
welcome2 mlist2
welcome3 mlist3
2 When someone wants to subscribe to your list
in the above example, they would email
welcome@yourdomain.com. This would
return the infobot created called "welcome" and put their email
address into the mailing list file in the maillists directory on your
server. You can go in and download the maillist file after it has been
created and people have subscribed. The mailing list file will be
created AFTER the first person subscribes, or if you yourself send
email to "welcome@yourdomain.com" to test it. Put yourself on the
mailing list to try this. People don't need to subscribe themselves --
you can add their names for them, or remove them at any time by
modifying and uploading the file in the "maillists" directory. People
cannot automatically unsubscribe themselves. You must go in and
manually remove their email address from the list.
3 When you want to send mail to all
subscribers, you can send email to mlist@yourdomain.com and the
PlusMail system will send it to the entire list.
4) If you want to see who is subscribing to your
maillist without having to go and check the maillists file
periodically via FTP, you can put a line in your .redirect
file. NOTE: it is important that you
have the infobot installed before entering the address line in the
.redirect. For the mlist example we used above, the line you
would add would look like this: welcome
yourdomain@yourdomain.com The welcome
document you created will be sent to the subscriber, AND you will
receive their email message.
Note: When sending email to your list
for the first time, you will get the autoresponder email back right
away, but you may not see the corresponding maillist file right
away as our system takes time to build it. Wait 15 or 30 minutes or so
and it will show up. (Depending on the time of day and current traffic
conditions, our servers may be allocating it to a lower
priority.)
Return to Main
Index
Go To Top of Page
|