Run a perl script in a browser via a link

Question

I'm attempting to get a perl script up and running on Oracle Linux 8.5.

My Apache server and virtual hosts work with static html.

My test virtual host, fnu, has a very basic perl script named hw.pl in /var/www/fnu:

#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "Hello, World. This is fnu.";

I have a link from index.html to hw.pl, permissions open and owner set to apache:

-rwxrwxrwx. 1 apache apache 89 Jun  4 20:59 hw.pl
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 apache apache  5 Jun  4 20:59 index.html -> hw.pl

Here's the site config in /etc/httpd/conf.d:

<VirtualHost *:80> 
DocumentRoot "/var/www/fnu/"
ServerName fnu.[obscured].net
ServerAlias fnu
ErrorLog /var/log/fnu/error.log
CustomLog /var/log/fnu/request.log combined
<\/VirtualHost>

<Directory "/var/www/fnu">
    Options +ExecCGI +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
    AddHandler cgi-script .cgi .pl
<\/Directory>

If I point a browser to fnu/hw.pl, I get the result I expect - the script output. If I point the browser to fnu/, I get the contents of the file. So, it's following the link, but it's not running it as a perl script once it gets there. Nothing useful in /var/log/fnu/error.log.

SELinux is set to Permissive.

I appreciate any assistance.

Script output as expected

Script file contents

What exactly are you trying to achieve? is your goal to have the Perl script run when you browse to the directory `fnu/`? — Tilman Schmidt, Jun 05 '22 at 17:47

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 05 '22 at 13:01

it's reading index.html as an html file.

one way to rectify this is to tell apache to execute .phtml files as perl.

to do this you locate the:

<IfModule dir_module>
     DirectoryIndex index.html index.phtml index.php
</IfModule>

in your httpd configurations and add index.phtml to the DirectoryIndex list as shown above.

then you want to AddHandler cgi-script .phtml and rename your link to index.phtml.

this should work, but it's been many years since i have used cgi in apache.

another way to do this is to use SSI (Server Side Includes) with mod_include. with this you can create an index.html and  OR 

i can't remember which is better, but depending on what your script does you can read the documentation and figure out the best method.

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 07 '22 at 00:29

0

Thank you, I got on the trail of another resource and was able to solve this using SetHandler in the config instead of AddHandler. I realize this may be an over-broad solution in some cases but it is doing what I want here.

<Directory "/var/www/fnu">
    SetHandler cgi-script
    Options +ExecCGI +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
<\/Directory>

The script now runs when I browse to fnu/.

edited Jun 07 '22 at 00:29

chicks

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answered Jun 05 '22 at 19:19

SKaye

1
1

Thanks for sharing your solution. Note that this will mean you cannot serve any static files from this directory. Everything in there will be treated as a CGI script. You could make `index.pl` to `DirectoryIndex`, symlink that to your script and base your handlers on extensions you will be able to host both in there. – chicks Jun 07 '22 at 00:33

Run a perl script in a browser via a link

2 Answers2