Cgi To File

Renaming like this doesn't actually convert them to a new format. It just changes which program opens the file. Since in this example, the document should be a PDF, renaming it is just putting the correct file extension on the file.

Cgi To File

It's beyond the scope of this article if what you're actually looking for is information on CGI programming. For example, if you want to translate information from a CGI form into an Excel file, you can't just convert the CGI script itself into an XLSX or XLS file.

A Web server that supports CGI can be configured to interpret a URL that it serves as a reference to a CGI script. A common convention is to have a cgi-bin/ directory at the base of the directory tree and treat all executable files within this directory (and no other, for security) as CGI scripts. Another popular convention is to use filename extensions; for instance, if CGI scripts are consistently given the extension .cgi, the Web server can be configured to interpret all such files as CGI scripts. While convenient, and required by many prepackaged scripts, it opens the server to attack if a remote user can upload executable code with the proper extension.

A CGI file is known as a Common Gateway Interface script that is used by a web server to run an external program to process user requests. The script which saved in a file with .cgi extension is typically written in C or Perl programming languages. The had been introduced since the early days of the Web, when Web developers wanted to connect databases to their Web servers. A server which supported a common gateway between Web server and databases was well suited to execute the CGI code.

The CGI scripts are used by the Web server to facilitate the owner to configure how a URL will be handled. The procedure is usually done by marking a new directory (where the documents are mainly located) as containing CGI scripts; its commonly known name is cgi-bin. For example, /usr/local/apache/htdocs/cgi-bin could be picked as a CGI directory on the Web server. When a Web browser requests a URL that points to a file within the CGI directory, then, instead of simply sending that file (/usr/local/apache/htdocs/cgi-bin/printenv.pl) to the Web browser, the HTTP server executes the specified script and return the output of the script to the Web browser. In short, anything that the CGI script is sent to standard output is transferred to the Web client instead of being shown in a terminal of window.

A CGI file is a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) script executed by a web server to create dynamic pages. It is typically written in Perl or C programming languages. CGI scripts are often stored in the "cgi-bin" folder within a website directory on a web server and can only be edited if they are not pre-compiled.

The FileInfo.com team has independently researched the Common Gateway Interface Script file format and Mac, Windows, and Linux apps listed on this page. Our goal is 100% accuracy and we only publish information about file types that we have verified.

The above code is giving the following error:"Could not open the file for writing...Permission denied at /var/www/cgi-bin/wfile.cgi line 8. The read and write permission for the file is already set... Please help!!!

By default, Nagios Core expects the CGI configuration file to be named cgi.cfg and located in the config file directory along with the main config file. If you need to change the name of the file or its location, you can configure Apache to pass an environment variable named NAGIOS_CGI_CONFIG (which points to the correct location) to the CGIs. See the Apache documentation for information on how to do this.

This specifies the location of your main configuration file. The CGIs need to know where to find this file in order to get information about configuration information, current host and service status, etc.

This is the physical path where the HTML files for Nagios are kept on your workstation or server. Nagiosassumes that the documentation and images files (used by the CGIs) are stored in subdirectories called docs/ and images/, respectively.

This option allows you to specify an image to be used as a background in the statusmap CGI if you use the user-supplied coordinates layout method. The background image is not be available in any other layout methods. It is assumed that the image resides in the HTML images path (i.e. /usr/local/nagios/share/images). This path is automatically determined by appending "/images" to the path specified by the physical_html_path directive. Note: The image file can be in GIF, JPEG, PNG, or GD2 format. However, GD2 format (preferably in uncompressed format) is recommended, as it will reduce the CPU load when the CGI generates the map image.

This option allows you to include your own objects in the generated VRML world. It is assumed that the file resides in the path specified by the physical_html_path directive. Note: This file must be a fully qualified VRML world (i.e. you can view it by itself in a VRML browser).

These options allow you to specify an audio file that should be played in your browser if there are problems when you are viewing the status CGI. If there are problems, the audio file for the most critical type of problem will be played. The most critical type of problem is on or more unreachable hosts, while the least critical is one or more services in an unknown state (see the order in the example above). Audio files are assumed to be in the media/ subdirectory in your HTML directory (i.e. /usr/local/nagios/share/media).

This option determines whether integration functionality with Splunk is enabled in the web interface. If enabled, you'll be presented with "Splunk It" links in various places in the CGIs (log file, alert history, host/service detail, etc). Useful if you're trying to research why a particular problem occurred. For more information on Splunk, visit

The ScriptAlias directive tells Apache that a particular directory is set aside for CGI programs. Apache will assume that every file in this directory is a CGI program, and will attempt to execute it, when that particular resource is requested by a client.

The example shown is from your default httpd.conf configuration file, if you installed Apache in the default location. The ScriptAlias directive is much like the Alias directive, which defines a URL prefix that is to mapped to a particular directory. Alias and ScriptAlias are usually used for directories that are outside of the DocumentRoot directory. The difference between Alias and ScriptAlias is that ScriptAlias has the added meaning that everything under that URL prefix will be considered a CGI program. So, the example above tells Apache that any request for a resource beginning with /cgi-bin/ should be served from the directory /usr/local/apache2/cgi-bin/, and should be treated as a CGI program.

For example, if the URL -bin/test.pl is requested, Apache will attempt to execute the file /usr/local/apache2/cgi-bin/test.pl and return the output. Of course, the file will have to exist, and be executable, and return output in a particular way, or Apache will return an error message.

The above directive tells Apache to permit the execution of CGI files. You will also need to tell the server what files are CGI files. The following AddHandler directive tells the server to treat all files with the cgi or pl extension as CGI programs:

Even if you are not familiar with Perl, you should be able to see what is happening here. The first line tells Apache (or whatever shell you happen to be running under) that this program can be executed by feeding the file to the interpreter found at the location /usr/bin/perl. The second line prints the content-type declaration we talked about, followed by two carriage-return newline pairs. This puts a blank line after the header, to indicate the end of the HTTP headers, and the beginning of the body. The third line prints the string "Hello, World.". And that's the end of it.

or wherever you put your file, you will see the one line Hello, World. appear in your browser window. It's not very exciting, but once you get that working, you'll have a good chance of getting just about anything working.

Remember that the server does not run as you. That is, when the server starts up, it is running with the permissions of an unprivileged user - usually nobody, or www - and so it will need extra permissions to execute files that are owned by you. Usually, the way to give a file sufficient permissions to be executed by nobody is to give everyone execute permission on the file:

When you run a program from your command line, you have certain information that is passed to the shell without you thinking about it. For example, you have a PATH, which tells the shell where it can look for files that you reference.

Unless you fully understand suexec, you should not be using it. To disable suexec, simply remove (or rename) the suexec binary pointed to by SUEXEC_BIN and then restart the server. If, after reading about suexec, you still wish to use it, then run suexec -V to find the location of the suexec log file, and use that log file to find what policy you are violating.

Environment variables are values that float around you as you use your computer. They are useful things like your path (where the computer searches for the actual file implementing a command when you type it), your username, your terminal type, and so on. For a full list of your normal, every day environment variables, type env at a command prompt.

Other communication between the server and the client happens over standard input (STDIN) and standard output (STDOUT). In normal everyday context, STDIN means the keyboard, or a file that a program is given to act on, and STDOUT usually means the console or screen.

When you POST a web form to a CGI program, the data in that form is bundled up into a special format and gets delivered to your CGI program over STDIN. The program then can process that data as though it was coming in from the keyboard, or from a file 041b061a72