perl pointer in .cgi files

[jyaki]

I was reading the manual and the second installation step says:

"Separately, open the files "gm.cgi", "gm-karma.cgi","gm-comments.cgi", and "gm-upload.cgi", and look at the very first line, which should say "#!/usr/bin/perl". Make sure that the Perl pointer here is correct; refer to your notes that you made. If, for example, your Perl directory is '/usr/local/bin/perl', change the first line in each of the four files to reflect that."

I'm using a windows server and perl is installed correctly but I don't know how I'm supposed to input the directory. I opened the cgi files with notepad and I've tried multiple ways:

#!/C:/perl/bin/perl
#!/C:/perl/bin/perl.exe
#!C:/perl/bin/perl
#!C:/perl/bin/perl.exe
#!/perl/bin/perl

None of them work though. I'm sure that I chmod'ed everything correctly so I'm not sure why I'm still getting the 500 internal server error.

[petefinnigan]

Hi,

I am not an expert on perl on Windows so its difficult to help directly but having said that the shebang line works for Unix/Linux (the #! ) but not on Win32. It doesnt harm to still have it on Windows as the "#" is a comment symbol. There are a number of ways to start perl scripts on Windows. The first is to double click in Windows Explorer, clearly not an option for GM. The second is to do :

> perl myscript.pl (or .cgi)

The next is to associate the extension for perl scripts with Windows so ytou can do:

> myscript.pl

Another way is to do it on the command line:

> assoc .pl=perl
> ftype perl=C:\perl\perl.exe %1 %*

obviously changfe the path. there is an issue with this as you need to do it for every session. You can set the PATHEXT env var though:

> set PATHEXT =%PATHEXT%;.pl

then you can do:

> myscript.pl

OK, what are the options. I would contact your ISP and ask what extensions that have associated with perl. If they havent then ask them to do it. Otherwise see if you can set env vars. Or move to a host that supports Linux.

hth

cheers

Pete

[coldstone]

Ok, I too am not a windows guy, that said I found this link that looks pretty good:

www.cgi101.com/book/connect/winxp.html

I covers the shebang line (perl pointer) and here is the place for perl on windows:

aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Reference/

Dollars to donuts your host is using the ActiveState version of perl (if I recall that is the only version of perl for Windows, but maybe thats just the only version I used).

Lastly, see if you can check your webserver error logs. It could be more than just not finding perl. Some web servers are finicky about file permissions, too open and they scream.

See if you can get a "hello world" script running, or see if your webhost will give you a sample cgi/perl script. Since your host setup the perl and whatnot, its reasonable for them to give you an example script.