Perl problems

gharvey · 12-14-2004, 08:42 AM

Hi all,

Perl is intalled and running on my box. If I type the following at the command line, my script executes fine:

perl /var/www/cgi-bin/hello.cgi

I have the correct permissions in the cgi-bin (I think) and Apache is pointing at the right folder for running scripts, however my file keeps throwing the following error:

Quote:

Can't open perl script "/var/www/cgi-bin/hello.cgi": No such file or directory.
Use -S to search $PATH for it.

The code itself is blindingly simple... good ol' "Hello World!"

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Hello, world!\n";

That's it. I've checked the path the Perl and is seems right. Other system info is:

Fedora 3
KDE
Perl 5.8.5
Apache 2.0.52

What am I doing wrong? All I can find in Google is references to what's new in Perl 5.8.5!

Cheers,

G

bathory · 12-14-2004, 09:02 AM

Just 2 things:
Is hello.cgi executable? chmod +755 hello.cgi
When you use perl scripts with a webserver you must use

Code:

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

before the output of any other data.
Regards

gharvey · 12-14-2004, 09:27 AM

Hi!

Checked permissions - they're correct. Added the header to the code (forgot about that with Perl - thanks!) but still the same error...

Any other suggestions?

G

gharvey · 12-14-2004, 10:40 AM

I think I may have jumped the gun a bit when entering my error! I put what I thought it was - brainwashed myself on Google before posting!

This is my actual error - it's pretty close, but might have clues as to the problem:

Quote:

Can't open perl script "\r": No such file or directory.
Use -S to search $PATH for it.

It's that \r that's got me curious... what the hell does that mean?? I'm calling http://my.server.co.uk/cgi-bin/hello.cgi - no \r to be seen!

G

gharvey · 12-14-2004, 11:58 AM

The \r is gone now - figured out what that was - looked like Linux didn't like the Windows line endings - converted to Unix and no probs there. There's a new error instead!!

Quote:

(2)No such file or directory: exec of '/var/www/cgi-bin/hello.cgi' failed
Premature end of script headers: hello.cgi

This is driving me nuts! The worst part is that it's damned near impossible to get a decent search out of Google using \(): etc.! *sigh*

Cheers,

G

gharvey · 12-14-2004, 12:34 PM

Starting to get somewhere on this now... Leave a newbie alone for long enough and they'll stumble across the answers!

Anyways, the first error was caused by Windows line endings - fixed!

The second error I can now fix, but it's still weird. The behaviour is as follows.

1. Script won't execute - error as detailed in post above
2. Change the # line to have a "-w" at the end of it
3. Script works
4. Change # line back
5. Script continues to work fine forever!

Why does it need the "-w" the first time it runs?

Thanks,

G

egag · 12-14-2004, 12:38 PM

-----------
#!/usr/bin/perl
-----------

is perl installed in that dir. ? ( maybe #!/usr/local/bin/perl....)

egag

gharvey · 12-14-2004, 12:39 PM

Yes - the right Perl dir is being referenced - I've moved on from that now - see my last post.

Thanks,

G

gharvey · 12-21-2004, 07:21 AM

I guess no one knows what's wrong here...