Greg Miller CGI Support

General UNIX Installation for Perl scripts

When you receive the files, it is best to use your e-mail program's function to save the files to disk rather than cutting and pasting the files into a text editor. This is because many text editors will add a carriage return and linefeed to the end of each line which will cause errors in most versions of perl.

After you have the files saved to disk, use an FTP program to transfer the scripts to your website's server (if you don't have an FTP program, you can get one from TUCows). If you cannot FTP files to your web server, contact your system administrator and ask him or her how to copy files onto the server.

Once the files are on the server, and in the proper directory, you need to telnet into your web server to modify the permissions on the file (if you don't have a telnet program, you can get one from TUCows. Once there, "cd" to the directory where you copied the files earlier and execute the following command:

chmod a+x+r filename

(where filename is the name of one of the files you were sent.)
Repeat this for each file you received.

You may need to edit your existing .html files which reference the CGI program to ensure they reference the correct filename.

Note:

Normally, with any perl script, you will also receive a file called "parse.pl". This file needs to be in the same directory as the .cgi file. If you receive more than one .cgi file, and you are putting these files in different directories, you'll need a copy of parse.pl in each directory.

And basically, that's it.

General Windows NT Installtion for Perl and Executable scripts

Follow the same steps above, only there is no need to telnet into the server and alter the permissions on the file.

Location of perl (or other script processor)

Perl isn't installed in the same place on every server. Normally it's installed in the /usr/local/bin directory, and the script you receive will point to this directory. If perl is located in a different directory, you'll need to modify the first line of the script using a UNIX text editor (such as "vi")to point to the correct location.

If you indicate the location of perl before I send you the script, I'll make the change for you. I highly recommend you include the location in which perl is installed when you submit your estimate.

Scripts which E-Mail Information

If your script specification includes having information e-mailed to you (or some other address), here are a few things you are likley to notice:

• The address in the "From:" field will not be that of the person who submitted the mail. Rather, this will be the address of your server's web account (most likley "www", "web", or "nobody").
• The "Subject:" field may be blank.

More help will be available later.