cgi-bin folder?

Question

I have these files in cgi-bin folder:

cgiecho
cgiemail
entropybanner.cgi
randhtml.cgi

I have no idea why I have that folder, or why I need it. Can someone explain in plain English, and let me know whether or not it is safe to delete this folder?

Answer 1

We can only speculate what the purpose of those scripts are without seeing them.

I would speculate that the first one simply prints out what is submitted to it, perhaps as some sort of testing/debugging tool

The second one probably was designed to take the contents of some web form and send the response to one or more email addresses

The third sounds like it is a part of a system to put advertising banners on a site

The last sounds like it might serve up a random web page, or some random HTML within a page.

The real way to see if you need these scripts is to open them, understand them or ask someone who can, then look at your site and see if that functionality is something you need.

You could also perhaps search through all your web pages and see if there are any references to these scripts there.

Answer 2

I think you're meaning on your own server. If those files are there by default when you set up your account, you can probably safely delete them, but they also probably aren't doing any harm.

Answer 3

Yes, i have managed VPS.

I tried to see on some other account on this VPS, but i guess i deleted those default folders some time ago. Because this account is important i will simply ask my support why is that in there... :) I tried to open those files with notepad++ but bunch of "NULL" of printed on my screen... Weird...